If you have been to an early music concert recently there is a good chance that the group playing was supported by, had been supported by in the past, or was about to be supported by the Continuo Foundation. In the three short years since they were set up Continuo have given away over £650,000 to small period instrument groups with another £100,000 in awards is to be announced on 21st March. Since those grants can be as small as £2,000 and rarely exceed £5,000 – that is a lot of groups!
So who, or what, is the Continuo Foundation?
And – since it was set up in September 2020 – is it another of the exciting initiatives that grew out of the pandemic?
Continuo was founded and is very much still run by keen music lover and concert goer Tina Vadaneaux. Tina had spent most of her professional life on Wall Street or in the City of London advising international clients raising hundreds of millions of pounds to build new infrastructure projects in ‘emerging markets’. After several changes of career, she spent a happy four years working pro bono with The Mozartists, a group exploring the music of Mozart and his contemporaries using only period instruments. However, this came to an abrupt halt with lockdown and the disintegration of the lives and careers of thousands of musicians the vast majority of whom, as freelancers, had no salary or security to fall back on when all their performances were cancelled. Not only did they have no income but their very raison d’etre – playing music to be heard by audiences – had been taken from them.
Spurred on by their desperate plight and encouraged by a colleague who already ran a successful charity, Tina followed a pipe dream – the creation a foundation to support period-instrument ensembles. That was in the autumn of 2020.
From pipe dream to reality
Although she knew relatively little about arts administration, Tina did know a great deal about how to find and persuade the right people to get involved with exciting new projects – and had learned how to raise the money to support them. She soon had a group of trustees in place, four internationally known early music patrons and, within the first three months she had raised £50,000 – the target she had set herself to test the viability of the project.
In the three years since then she has raised a further £700,000 which has gone to support 85 different ensembles (including 19 emerging ensembles) working in 145 different projects in 150 locations across the UK with more to be announced soon.
Early instruments
The focus of the foundation is on early or period instruments – either the originals or modern replicas – and the groups that play them. The majority of the music that they play is 17th or 18th century but grants are not restricted to groups who only play baroque music. They are, however, restricted to early instrument groups working in the UK and those groups have to have a project for which they want the money.
The grants
The smallest grant is around £2,000 – the maximum is £8,000 and there are two grant rounds a year awarded after a two step evaulation process.
Aware that musicians are neither administrators nor marketeers, the application process is kept as simple as possible – and a Continuo grant comes with on going publicity and marketing backup to ensure that the projects are successful.
One of the unforeseen benefits of the rigorous evaluation process and the foundation’s ongoing support for its grantees is that being Continuo Foundation grantee is starting to be seen as a endorsement in its own right. ‘If they were good enough for Continuo to support them, then that’s good enough for us – we don’t really need to investigate any further.’
To see who these groups are, see the Grantee page of the Continuo website – and to see what these grants have meant to some of the emerging groups who have received them, take a look at the Impact page on the site.
Continuo Connect
It was the desire to ensure a ‘financially stable’ future for the groups that they supported that led to the creation of Continuo Connect – ‘the go-to guide for early music’.
Understanding that marketing is a crucial element in the success of any enterprise, musical or otherwise, and that, understandably, musicians may not be marketing experts, the Connect site has been designed as a easy-to-use marketing tool for any early music group or organiser of a festival or concert series. Essentially it is a listing of early music events anywhere in the country, no matter how small the venue or where it is situated. It is aimed at concerts goers but also at organisers, venues, projects seeking artists, groups seeking collaborators – or anyone wanting to know more about the early music world. Short box listings with an image on the What’s On page of the site lead to a page about the event on the Continuo Connect site with a link to a booking page and a contact email or site.
Listing every event
Groups need to create their own listings but once they have signed up with Continuo Connect they will be guided through the set up process. The listing is open to any group, not just Foundation grantees, and is free. The ambition is for it to include every early music event in the country.
While the listings are obviously the core and heart of the site, there are also longer articles about particular groups, interviews with early music players both eminent and at the start of their careers and a whole range of other early music rabbit holes down which site visitors can happily burrow.
Launched in 2023 – the site already lists over 900 events so while it has certainly not yet scooped up every early music event in the country, it is making good progress in that direction!
Check it out
So, next time you have a spare evening and fancy a little early music, check in to Continuo Connect and see what is on offer. And next time you go to an early music event, just look out for that Continuo Foundation logo which will tell you that the group has been supported by the foundation.
Meanwhile, if you want to know more about either the Foundation or Connect, check in to Continuo Foundation or Continuo Connect where you can listen to some early music, read about how Sir Roger Norrington transformed the early music scene back in the 1980s, discover everything you will ever want to know about recorders, talk to a harpsichord maker – or find out how to create an historical meal to accompany an early music concert – a piece inspired by our upcoming concert with the lovely basset horn ladies of the Vauxhall Band (another Continuo grantee) on April 8th!
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