Oxford Festival of the Arts

17/06/2026

And now for our Early Music Weekend finale! At 730pm in the Grove Auditorium, we present 'Who is John Dowland?' featuring two of the most respected and exceptional musicians, tenor Nicholas Mulroy and lutenist Elizabeth Kenny, to celebrate of the 400th anniversary of John Dowland in what promises to be a true highlight of the Festival programme.

Their Elizabethan programme will celebrate Dowland’s music and legacy with a selection of his works alongside those by his contemporaries.

This is a concert absolutely not to be missed!

Tickets available below -
https://artsfestivaloxford.org/events/who-was-john-dowland-nicholas-mulroy-tenor-elizabeth-kenny-lute/

17/06/2026

Moving into Sunday's Early Music Weekend schedule, we kick proceedings off at the Grove Auditorium with the Lowe Ensemble and their Echos of the Spanish Baroque programme

This programme will feature works by Spanish composers as well as French, Italian and English composers who were deeply influenced by Spanish culture and language. Notable highlights include Handel’s rare and colourful profane Spanish cantata No se emendará jamás and Lully’s Sé que me muero de amor from ‘Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme’, which reflect the allure of the Spanish language and its poetic expressiveness. Lowe Ensemble are also thrilled to present the debut performance of their own arrangement of ‘Fandango, R. 146’ by Antonio Soler.

Lowe Ensemble is a Baroque music group made up of five siblings with British and Spanish roots, currently based in London. Driven by a shared passion for Baroque music, they bring the music of the 17th and 18th centuries to today’s stage and audiences, with performances that blend the beauty of historical music with the closeness of their family within the immediacy of the contemporary stage, creating a unique and powerful experience to share with audiences from all backgrounds.

Tickets available at the link below!
https://artsfestivaloxford.org/events/echoes-of-the-spanish-baroque-lowe-ensemble/

17/06/2026

Saturday of Early Music Weekend sees the return of a popular favourite from festival past, in the form of Bellot Ensemble's evening performance in the Grove Auditorium, this time set to delight our ears with 'Dreams under the Wings of Morpheus'!

‘Dreams Under the Wings of Morpheus’ follows the quiet journey from sleep into waking, guided by the figures who shaped the ancient understanding of dreams. Scenes from Cavalli and Lully sit beside Italian and English lullabies, with pieces carrying private messages, expressed through signs rather than speech. In myth, the imagined dream world did not end because the dream was finished but because something real cut through it. The calls of the nightingale and the cuckoo in works by Merula, Uccellini and Biber, act as symbols of morning and awareness, breaking the stillness that sleep had held. We follow this shift into daylight – where love, longing, and reflection appear without the disguises of dream through works by Monteverdi, Lambert and Lanier, exploring how signs, symbols and quiet natural cues shape the way we understand inner experience.

A concert not to be missed! Tickets available at the link below - https://artsfestivaloxford.org/events/dreams-under-the-wings-of-morpheus-bellot-ensemble/

17/06/2026

Next up in the Early Music Weekend schedule, we present Palisander performing Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

Palisander prides itself in presenting imaginative, historical programmes with a wide range of repertoire; performing largely from memory, on recorders up to 6 feet tall! Devising their own choreography, as well as writing new compositions and unique arrangements for the ensemble, the group’s members are keen ambassadors for the recorder’s versatility. This is brought to life in the exciting theatrical concerts, for which Palisander is known.

Today’s concert will feature music by Hildegard von Bingen, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Dowland and Giuseppe Tartini.

They are performing in the Grove Auditorium at Magdalen College at 4pm - tickets available at the link below!

https://artsfestivaloxford.org/events/double-double-toil-trouble-palisander/

17/06/2026

With our Early Music Weekend only 2 days away, this post will be the first of several detailing each event in our programme!

First in the schedule, in collaboration with Continuo Foundation, we present Music D'Outrora performing their debut album, Still Life.

Música d’Outrora is an early music ensemble founded in 2022 by Galician director and harpsichordist Pablo Devigo. Active internationally, the group specialises in 17th-century Italian repertoire, focusing particularly on the stylus phantasticus, a Baroque compositional style characterised by freedom, fantasy and dramatic contrasts.

They will be performing in the Grove Auditorium at Magdalen College at 2pm - tickets available at the link below!

https://artsfestivaloxford.org/.../still-life-musica.../

17/06/2026

17/06/2026

15/06/2026

Opening on Friday, 19th June:
Silence and Sreaming, an exhibtion and installation by Qu Lei Lei and Caroline Deane

An exhibition with a message: aside from our geo-political position, our social status, or our ethnicity, we share one thing: we are all human.

In an environment of largely unregulated exponential development in global science and technology, where benefits to humanity run alongside unknown harm, the layers of uncertainty prevailing in todays’ systems of governance are alarmingly. Levels of chaos intervene as our grip on reality and integrity are corroded by misinformation.

Humanity, in its simple, modest, and most genuine form is being relentlessly knocked over by greed, war, corruption, abuse of power, and voracious environmental destruction. Its resilience, courage, and ability to constantly pick itself up and dust itself down arguably remain constant as similar predicaments kick it over time and time again, relentlessly, like skittles in a bowling alley, down through the annals of history.

15/06/2026

15/06/2026

Nicholas will feature in our final performance of our Early Music Weekend alongside Elizabeth Kenny performing the works of John Dowland - 6pm-8pm on Sunday 21st June!

https://artsfestivaloxford.org/events/who-was-john-dowland-nicholas-mulroy-tenor-elizabeth-kenny-lute/