New Year’s Extravaganza by Candlelight

Join the Festive Orchestra of London, violin virtuoso Matthew Truscott and oboist Geoffrey Coates for their traditional celebration of the new year at St Martin’s church. The programme features many of music’s most popular masterpieces and finishes with Vivaldi’s spectacular Four Seasons.

Family Activity: Marvellous Maps, The Past, Present and Future of St Martin’s

The St Martin-in-the-Fields 300 Heritage Project has been made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, we have been able to put on a special exhibition, undertake a variety of community projects and outreach activities and make more of St Martin’s story available online.

Come along to St Martin’s for this fun family activity, suitable for children aged 5-13 years.

Become a city planner for the day: explore old maps of London from the church’s archive, and using toy blocks, build a 3D city map to create a new St Martin-in-the-Fields Parish. Will you add schools, police stations and bath houses? How will you look after the poor and what other buildings do you need for locals?

Location for this event TBC. Check back for further information. Crypt Café and 300th Exhibition will be closed today.

Family Activity: Marvellous Maps, The Past, Present and Future of St Martin’s

The St Martin-in-the-Fields 300 Heritage Project has been made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, we have been able to put on a special exhibition, undertake a variety of community projects and outreach activities and make more of St Martin’s story available online.

Come along to St Martin’s for this fun family activity, suitable for children aged 5-13 years.

Become a city planner for the day: explore old maps of London from the church’s archive, and using toy blocks, build a 3D city map to create a new St Martin-in-the-Fields Parish. Will you add schools, police stations and bath houses? How will you look after the poor and what other buildings do you need for locals?

Drop in. No booking required.

Sounds of India: Akash Parekar and Janan Sathiendran

The strings of the sitar have always known how to fill a sacred space. At St Martin-in-the-Fields, where centuries of collective reverence live in the walls, Darbar brings the ancient soul of Indian classical music home to one of London’s most beloved churches.

Akash Parekar is one of the most exciting voices in a new generation of British-born sitar players. Beginning his journey at just eighteen, he has since studied under a lineage of masters including the renowned Roopa Panesar, Ustad Dharambir Singh MBE, and Ustad Irshad Khan, son and disciple of Ustad Imrat Khan. Rooted in both Western classical and contemporary music, Akash brings a fresh sensibility to the sitar without losing sight of its deep spiritual core. His collaborative work spans Glastonbury to the recording studio, with artists as varied as Zak Starkey and Mayur Navekar, and he is currently completing his debut album.

Joining him is tabla player Janan Sathiendran, whose training spans both Hindustani and Carnatic traditions under Shri Sukhdeep Singh Dhanjal and Pandit Yogesh Samsi. Raised in London in a home rich with musical diversity, Janan has shared stages with Nitin Sawhney, A.R. Rahman, and Abi Sampa.

In a church built on centuries of shared reverence, these two artists bring music that has always understood the distance between the human and the divine is measured not in doctrine, but in sound.

Great Sacred Music: Corpus Christi

Every Thursday at 1pm in the church, we present Great Sacred Music, our 35-minute lunchtime sequence of words and music. Led by St Martin’s Voices, directed by Andrew Earis, it explores, through song and readings, the great classical music of our religious heritage.

Great Sacred Music will be livestreamed on Youtube on @stmartin-in-the-fieldsmusic and our Facebook page each week. . Or via this link: https://stmartins.digital/

The Spirit of St Martin’s campaign for supporting this season of Great Sacred Music.

https://www.youtube.com/@stmartin-in-the-fieldsmusic

Great Sacred Music: Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo

Every Thursday at 1pm in the church, we present Great Sacred Music, our 35-minute lunchtime sequence of words and music. Led by St Martin’s Voices, directed by Andrew Earis, it explores, through song and readings, the great classical music of our religious heritage.

Great Sacred Music will be livestreamed on Youtube on @stmartin-in-the-fieldsmusic and our Facebook page each week. . Or via this link: https://stmartins.digital/

The Spirit of St Martin’s campaign for supporting this season of Great Sacred Music.

https://www.youtube.com/@stmartin-in-the-fieldsmusic

The Gesualdo Six and Bill Barclay: Death of Gesualdo

Following a string of 5-star reviews and sell-out performances, The Gesualdo Six return to St Martin’s with Death of Gesualdo. Reunited with director Bill Barclay, the ensemble brings this visceral theatrical experience to our stage once again following widespread international acclaim.

Six singers, six actors and a puppet enact a series of narrative tableaux which open on the composer’s deathbed and superimpose iconic moments from his life onto some of his most chilling music. The result, a Stations of the Cross for the composer’s tortured conscience, is the boldest look yet at how the life and music of this enigmatic prodigy must function together for the true Gesualdo to emerge from the shadows.

The madrigalist Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613) may be most famous for murdering his wife and her lover in bed, but among composers he is revered for anticipating chromaticism by 200 years. Gesualdo’s tortured mind led him into a life of violence and suffering, concluding in appalling tales of sorcery and flagellation. However shockingly macabre his biography, the Prince of Venosa’s malignant narcissism can be traced to key incidents from his upbringing in the zero-sum game of Catholic politics.

Commissioned by St Martin-in-the-Fields, The National Centre for Early Music in York, and Music Before 1800 in NYC.