Benedetti Baroque Orchestra

Formed in December 2020 for Nicola Benedetti’s first album recorded on gut strings, Baroque was released by Decca Classics on 16 July 2021 to critical acclaim. The newly formed ensemble “Benedetti Baroque Orchestra” gathers freelance period-instrument players who collectively join together to create the highest level of collaborative and energised music making, directed by violinist Nicola Benedetti.

In July 2021, Nicola Benedetti and Askonas Holt organised a series of eight intimate concerts of music featured in Baroque, including three of Vivaldi’s Violin Concerti and Geminiani’s Concerto Grosso ‘La Folia’ with the Benedetti Baroque Orchestra, at the beautiful Grand Hall at Battersea Arts Centre. These one-hour concerts were conversational, spontaneous and personal. Nicola and the Benedetti Baroque Orchestra builds on Askonas Holt’s long-standing history of presenting, and these performances marked the first time that Askonas Holt co-presented Nicola in concert.

As part of Nicola Benedetti’s residency at the 2021 Edinburgh International Festival, BBO performed two concerts and in June 2022 the ensemble were reunited for a performance at the Aldeburgh Festival.

Nicola Benedetti:

This music is so deeply invigorating, energy-giving, freeing, grounding and moving. I am so excited to be releasing my first baroque album with this wonderful group of freelance musicians, and to have the opportunity to perform it for people in the hauntingly beautiful setting of Battersea Arts Centre. I have long dreamt of presenting a project which brings together a recording, live performance and our education work and with Baroque we are finally achieving this. Emotionally and psychologically, musicians crave making music together and performing for people, live…