2021 Impact Report

Impact Report

2021

THE VACHE BAROQUE FESTIVAL REGISTERED UK CHARITY NO. 1193591 CHALFONT ST. GILES BUCKS HP8 4SD

924

ATTENDEES ACROSS

6

PUBLIC PERFORMANCES

138

UNDER-35 TICKETS SOLD

2

EDUCATION PROGRAMMES LAUNCHED

71

MUSICIANS & CREATIVES EMPLOYED

247

ATTENDEES FROM BUCKS

23

FOUNDING VBFRIENDS

4

VBFRIENDS EVENTS HELD

Contents

4 LETTER FROM THE FOUNDERS

11 YOUNG ARTIST QUOTES

5 WHO WE ARE

12 FINANCIAL OVERVIEW

6 2021 ACTIVITIES

13 THANK YOU

9 2021 EDUCATION ACTIVITIES

14 FUTURE PLANS

Coffee Baroque

Became a Charity

Purcell Reimagined

SummerFestival

Letter from the founders Still not out of the woods with the pandemic, we are thrilled to be able to look back on the success of the Vache Baroque Festival’s second year, both on and off the stage.

Behind the scenes, we became a registered charity and have been working closely with four wonderful trustees to focus the delivery of our mission and secure the financial stability of the organisation.

With the invaluable support of our founding VBFriends and other donors, both financial and in kind, we were able to launch two education initiatives - a children’s choir and a Young Artist programme - with all participants singing in the opening festival performance alongside professional musicians and actors. Thank you to all the workshop and masterclass leaders, animateurs, chaperones, and parents who have helped these young people take a step forward on their musical journey.

We had the great pleasure of kick-starting live events again in May, staging two coffeeinfused immersive stagings of a mini opera on a glorious sunny day. Continuing with world-class standards of performance, with our 2021 opera receiving excellent reviews in some respected national publications. Thanks must go to all the creatives and teams involved in VBF across the year not just for their hard work and artistry but for keeping all around them safe - the Year of the Lateral Flows. To all who attended our events, whether at The Vache or online, we are so grateful.

And so on we go, knowing there are many things we can improve on in the coming year but confident we can do so with the support of the brilliant people across the many layers of VBF. We look forward to presenting some very exciting projects and talented artists to the public in 2022!

Betty & Jonathan

Who we are

Patron JAMES BOWMAN CBE Trustee JEREMY LEWISON Trustee HEATHER WAKEFIELD Trustee LOUIS BALOGUN Trustee SARA KATE ANTROBUS

Artistic Director JONATHAN DARBOURNE Executive Director BETTY MAKHARINSKY Executive Producer DANIEL MAKHARINSKY Press & Marketing Lead AMELIA ANDERSON Development Officer CAROLINE HALLS Festival Administrator ORSI TORJAK Production Assistant GABRIELLE COURT Production Assistant JAMES LARBOW

2021 Activities

Coffee Baroque

Two performances of J. S. Bach’s light-hearted ‘Coffee Cantata’ on Saturday 29th May, prefaced with folk music and coffee-themed poetry selected by our event partner, Milton’s Cottage. A multi-artform, relatively informal and semi-immersive event featuring singers, a small band, and a spoken word artist. The staging, costumes and english surtitles were all in VBF’s playful and contemporary style, and food and drinks partners Manna Eating provided coffee and sweet treats for the audience.

Kindly supported by the Marchus Trust.

Paradise & Pandemonium

To launch our 2021 Summer festival, we worked again with Milton’s Cottage to present Paradise & Pandemonium, an event combining the epic poetry of John Milton with music from the same period. The poetry consisted of a dramatic edit of both Paradise Regain’d and Lost (this being the 350th anniversary of the publication of the former) recited by industry stars Simon Callow, Evelyn Miller, and Ukweli Roach, punctuated with music by J. S. Bach and his contemporaries dealing with similar ideas of good and evil and humanity’s struggle between the two. This performance featured established and rising stars of the Baroque music scene, and also included the first performance of our Children’s Choir made up of local Buckinghamshire children, alongside our professional musicians. We also had thematic sound installations placed throughout the Vache grounds for audience members to experience; displayed a piece by acclaimed sculptor Bill Woodrow; and scheduled a pop-up performance before the main event.

Acis & Galatea

Two performances of Acis and Galatea were the main events of the 2021 festival. An elaborately staged version of Handel’s comic opera, directed by Sophie Gilpin and designed by Laura Jane Stanfield, was complemented again by sound installations and pop-up performances throughout the grounds. These included a recital of Baroque songs by the chorus members and an instrumental performance by members of the band, both in costume.

The cast was made up of some of the UK’s most promising emerging talent, with the main roles being sung by a trio of established young stars - Rowan Pierce, James Way, and Tristan Hambleton - each making strides on the international Baroque music scene.

Kindly supported by the Rothschild Foundation.

Responding to an open advert, 12 local children aged 9-14 attended a series of workshops and rehearsals at the Vache, culminating in them taking part in the performance of Paradise & Pandemonium on 28th August, singing a chorus in one of the larger works by J. S. Bach. Workshops featured vocal and physical warm-ups and games, team-building exercises, as well as rehearsals for the performance itself, and were led by professional animateurs and workshop leaders Suzzie Vango and Gabriella Liandu, as well as our own Artistic Director, Jonathan Darbourne. Participation was free and travel bursaries were available.

To embed ourselves deeper into our local community and to further our mission of opening up Baroque music to new audiences, we once again invited members of local youth groups, schools and residential communities to come and watch the dress rehearsal of Acis & Galatea free of charge on 1st September. 47 people attended, including a group from the Wycombe Refugee Partnership.

To nurture talent at the emerging professional level, we held our inaugural Young Artist Programme for three singers aged 18-22. They received individual coaching from our Artistic Director, a movement session with Mandy Demetriou, a masterclass on Bach arias led by international countertenor Alex Potter, professional headshots, and the chance to rehearse and perform in Paradise & Pandemonium alongside established industry professionals, giving them valuable experience and contacts.

This experience meant a great deal to me, it’s the first time working in a professional environment and with The Vache team they made it the most welcoming time. It was a great way to get started in Baroque Music.

Getting to sing alongside singers whom I admire... on an equal footing within the section was an extremely motivating experience.

It was a brilliant way to not only learn but to really be involved, and apply that knowledge effectively to great pieces of music. I had so much fun and took away more skills and practice that will continue to help me to grow in my future career.

Income £119,074

Expenditure £107,695

Thank you

We are so grateful for the support of all of our VBFriends. In 2021 your gifts made up over 50% of our income. Without them, we simply wouldn’t be able to exist. Our heartfelt thanks go to: Lionel Anthony Gill Antrobus Vassilina Bindley Paul and Elaine Bollinghaus James Bowman CBE John and Jan Dugdale Bradley Katya Burova Andrew Carver Clare Coyle Madeleine Evans Ekaterina Fields Juliet Fraser Liubov Galkina Tatjana Gertik Norman Ginsburg Ed Goble Mikhail Gurevich Katia Haddad Joel Hayhow Sveta Kashinsky Elena and Mikhail Kroupeev Andrey and Olga Kulikov Nino Kuparadze Andrew Johnson Thank you to these organisations who have so kindly chosen to support our work: Founders Pledge The Marchus Trust The Rothschild Foundation UBS AG Bank

Jonathan Levy Jeremy Lewison Olivia Ma Leonid and Olga Makharinsky Peter McDonald Leonid and Marina Melamed Elizaveta Meshkvicheva Mariana Molchanova Sue and Rick Morrison Natalia Moskaleva Tatiana Nikola Laly Nikatsadze Ana Novichikhina Olga Pavlova Natalia Pochekutova Tatiana Ryskina Kobby Thomas Olga Tomushkina Eric Verge Heather Wakefield Dr and Mrs Anthony Welch Christina Yoon Boris and Yulia Zimin Other anonymous donors Thank you to our patron James Bowman CBE, our four founding trustees, and all our other volunteers.

Your gifts of time and expertise are truly invaluable.

Thanks also to The Photography Shed & Ben Tomlin Photography for capturing the images in this report.

Future Plans

We're pleased to have achieved both goals set out in our 2020 Impact Report: we invested in a large stage cover structure and a surtitles screen, both of which lifted our performances dramatically. We hired a number of marquees to provide shelter for our audience in case of rain, although once again we were very lucky with the weather! In terms of Covid-19 safety, all performers and crew members submitted daily LFTs which enabled us to create a safe working environment for all.

This year, we have three major goals. We want to continue lifting our on-site experience with zany production touches, both on-stage and around the grounds, and to grow our education programme substantially via our 'Well-Tuned Keyboard' project. Our young musicians will have a chance to perform alongside leading professionals at our gala event in the Autumn. Our third goal is to begin our transition from start-up to established organisation. Our recently expanded board of trustees continues to help us with clarifying our mission and creating a multi-year strategy. We are also investing significant time in fundraising and grant applications. We are incredibly grateful to all our supporters, without whom our work simply would not be possible.

The post-pandemic climate continues to be extremely competitive and in 2021 we had to be responsive to setbacks. Although we decided to postpone our ‘Dance Stories’ project, we are really looking forward to bringing it to life in the future, in collaboration with the fantastic BirdGang Ltd. Our ambitions for the future are to keep the quality of our public performances high, presenting events with novel concepts and surprising artistic combinations. Greater reach is important to us too: in years to come, we aim to expand the number of performances and education activities we produce, both on-site, at other venues, and for touring in collaboration with partners.

Info about our 2022 opera - Orphée - and our Ukraine Fundraiser is now live on our website. To stay tuned with our news and to receive our VBShowcase videos directly to your inbox, please sign up to our mailing list. Thank you for reading!

The Vache Baroque Festival Registered Charity 1193591 vachebaroquefestival.com