Echoes of Medieval Coventry
Friday 28th November 2025
Elgar Concert Hall, University of Birmingham
Entrance free
Andrew Kirkman director
with His Majesty’s Sagbutts and Cornetts
Peyton and Barber Professor of Music Andrew Kirkman takes to the stage with his award-winning vocal group, the Binchois Consort. This performance showcases the AHRC-funded project Aural Histories: Coventry 1451-1642, a musical and architectural history that seeks new insights into the experience of music in the City of Coventry during a period of immense cultural change. Today’s concert features music appropriate to the first of the project’s two ‘time-slices’: 1451, when Henry VI attended Mass in St Michael’s church (the former Coventry Cathedral); and 1528, when a new organ was built for the (still standing) church of Holy Trinity.
Meet the Coventry Waits!
Sunday 25th January 2025, time tbc, St Mary's Guildhall, Coventry
Save the date for this 1-hour family concert of medieval and renaissance music for wind instruments. His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts will play music for Kings and Queens, for dancing, and for singing, and will demonstrate some of the weird and wonderful musical instruments played in Coventry by the town band many years ago.
Music for Medieval Coventry
Friday 12th September 2025, 7.30pm, Holy Trinity Church, Coventry
Featuring the Binchois Consort, members of His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts and the Choir of Holy Trinity Church
Join us as we celebrate the end of the Aural Histories: Coventry, 1451-1642 project with an evening of sacred and secular music from two turbulent centuries of English history. The concert will feature anonymous music from the Coventry Leet Book, motets by Hugh Aston and Robert Hunt, metrical psalmody, sacred music by Byrd and Gibbons, secular dances, trumpet fanfares, and audience participation! The concert will last approximately one hour and refreshments will be served afterwards. Attendance is free.
Aural Histories App Launch
Thursday 11th September 2025, 6.00-8.00pm, The School Room, Trinity House, Coventry
The Aural Histories project is developing a smartphone app to deliver audio/visual experiences of music at key moments in history in three of Coventry's historic spaces, St Michael's Parish Church, Holy Trinity Church, and St Mary's Guildhall. The app will be available in beta in September this year. This event is designed to introduce our work to the cultural, leisure, and tourism sectors in Coventry and to engage with interested organisations on maximising the impact of this digital tool.
The event is free to attend, but to manage numbers, please register using this Eventbrite link if you would like to participate:
If you have any questions about this event, please email helen.roberts@bcu.ac.uk.
Midsummer Music for Medieval Coventry
Sunday June 23rd 2024, from 1-3.30pm at St Mary's Guildhall, 5pm at Holy Trinity, and 7pm at St Mary's Guildhall.
Join the Binchois Consort, His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts, and the Choir of Holy Trinity Church for a day of medieval and renaissance music in two of Coventry's historic venues.
Choral Evensong with His Majesty's Sagbutts and Cornetts
On Sunday 8th October the choir of Holy Trinity will be joined by renowned period instrument ensemble His Majesty's Sagbutts and Cornetts for a special evensong service featuring music by the English renaissance composer William Byrd, who died 400 years ago this year. This event is part of a government-funded research project based at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire investigating music in Coventry between 1451 and 1642. Holy Trinity Church is an important part of this research and we will be performing music that might have been heard here in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries with some of the historical instruments that were common in town and cities around England at this time. After the service, there will be an opportunity to hear more about the project in a short informal talk.
