Hi! My name is Seb, and I'm the artistic director of Castle Baroque Players, a new amateur Baroque ensemble in Leicestershire, UK. I've worked as a freelance musician around Leicestershire for a few years now, and am very excited to be working on this new project.

There has been a drought of early music in both Hinckley & Bosworth and the wider Leicestershire scene. Castle Baroque Players not only allows the thriving local classical music audience to appreciate the repertoire performed on authentic instruments, but with our modern and forward-looking approaches both in marketing, production, and performance style, will bring classical music as a genre to a much wider and younger audience.

I am looking to stage a production of Purcell's 'Dido and Aeneas' in April 2026 in Leicester. This production will involve local singers and musicians, and will feature both period instruments and a contemporary dramatic approach. Some of my other theatrical work has been quite avant-garde (https://seabasstheatre.carrd.co/), so to create an artistic fusion of past and present is a really exciting venture. It should promise to bring a completely fresh audience to both sides of the artistic spectrum, and help to unite different sections of the Leicestershire creative community.

Unfortunately, this all comes at a pretty heavy cost. Current projections state that the costs to produce 'Dido and Aeneas' sit at around £5000. The first concerts we have produced have been challenging to produce because of financial constraints that naturally occur when a new venture is being created, mainly due to the hiring of period instruments from the Cambridge Centre for Music Performance. While in the grand scheme of things for a production of this scale, the costs are not extraordinary, for a new niche group like Castle Baroque Players, this is a very challenging feat to pull off financially.

On a personal note: directing a period-instrument ensemble has been a dream of mine for many years now. If this venture were to become successful, which would certainly be helped by your support, it would make a dream come true for me, and allow me to gain an immense opportunity of experience-building in this field of ensemble leadership, which I hope to become part of my future career.

Our social media can be found here: Facebook, Instagram. These are updated regularly with clips from rehearsals and concerts.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I really hope that you will be so generous as to support our venture.