Cross-cultural influence is reflected in one of the Birmingham Early Music Festival’s associated events, a concert in the University Great Hall entitled “Byzantium and its Legacy”, in which the English Chamber Choir with Patricia Rozario will perform Byzantine chant and polyphony together with music inspired by it (for example, by John Tavener). More broadly, the idea of cultural exchange is at the heart of this year’s festival.

The opening concert, “enCounterPoints... in the French Baroque”, is given by Charivari Agréeable and looks at the meeting of French and Italian styles in the sphere of late 17th-century chamber music in a programme including works by three generations of Couperins, by the quintessentially French Marin Marais and by such Italophiles as Michel Corrette and Nicolas Chédeville. Fretwork’s programme focuses on the encounter between Jewish musicians and their Christian contemporaries at the Elizabethan or Jacobean court.

Jewish composers had good reasons to disguise their origins, yet their music includes much to admire. The encounter between the late baroque and the early Classical styles is the subject of Florilegium’s concert with Emma Kirkby, which combines cantatas by J. S. Bach and J. A. Hasse, and instrumental music by Telemann and C. P. E Bach. The Dufay Collective and the Spanish-based Arab group Alquimia share a residency at Aldeburgh this year.

Their concert at Birmingham is one of the fruits of this collaboration and looks at the encounter between Arab-Andalusian and Christian traditions with troubadour dance songs, Cantigas de Santa Maria from the court of Alfonso el Sabio, and music of the Arab Nuba. In addition to “Byzantium and its Legacy”, the Henry Barber Trust is funding a free lunchtime concert by The Brook Street Band, in which a German named Handel, during his youthful years in Italy, meets the famous Venetian violinist, Vivaldi.

This is one of the festival’s four associated events, which are another new departure in 2007. October will see the re-opening, after extensive refurbishment, of Birmingham Town Hall, one of the earliest purpose-built concert halls in Europe. In years to come, the Town Hall will play host to concerts of early music as well as events of many different kinds. The Birmingham Early Music Festival has teamed up with Performances Birmingham to engage in reciprocal promotion for the benefit of early music and its audiences in the West Midlands.

www.bemf.net