The City Music Foundation is launching an online recital series, to continue its mission of offering creative and crucial exposure to its young musicians, even during this period of pandemic-related venue closures.

The dramatic setting for the recitals - which will conform to all requirements for social distancing and so not be for a live audience in the venue itself - will be high up in one of London’s leading landmarks of Victorian architecture, in the clock tower of George Gilbert Scott’s St Pancras Chambers.

Each concert will be streamed live on YouTube on Wednesdays at 6pm – starting on June 17 with a programme neatly reflecting the diversity of artists on the scheme: mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean, guitarist Andrey Lebedev, and accordionist Bartosz Glowacki, who will offer a programme ranging from Bach to Piazzolla, via The Girl from Ipanema. The recitals will be free to watch, but viewers will be invited to donate to help the CMF in supporting the artists at this time, and in the months ahead when more usual musical live returns. CMF supports its hand-picked artists for two years or more, offering career development support and management at the vital initial stage following graduation from conservatoire. 

‘Our musicians, like so many others, have had no audiences, no gigs and no income for nearly three months now, with the situation likely to continue for at least three more, and maybe even longer,’ said the Director of CMF, Clare Taylor. ‘The effects of this are devastating, not only for artists and audiences as individuals but for the very existence of the arts in the future. Music, especially live music, is a cognitive, spiritual and social necessity, not a luxury.’

For more information, visit the CMF website.