BRIGHTON Early Music Festival (BREMF) is taking its audience on a European trip taking in the Paris opera, German coffee houses and a Portuguese monastery.

And anyone who sees the travel brochure-style programme to match the Cities theme will realise this is not a series of staid performances where the audience is expected to keep quiet and sit in rows.

“Sitting in a concert hall is very modern,” says BREMF co-artistic director Clare Norburn. “It is not the context in which a lot of this music would have been heard. Music was much more part of the social experience, which is what we are trying to get it back to.”

As well as cabaret-style seating for many shows, there will be cheaper prom tickets available for the first time.

“We want to see if we could reach a younger audience,” says Norburn. “Since the summer we have been getting opinions from a group of people aged from 15 to 29, and one of the key points was that people can’t afford to take the risk if they don’t know the music.”

The festival is hosting a series of Grand Tour Shorts featuring four groups of young artists supported by BREMF’s Early Music Live! programme at the Latest Music Bar in Manchester Street, on Saturday, November 1.

The day takes inspiration from the Grand Tours young aristocrats took in the 18th century to see the world.

“We wanted to hold it somewhere a bit different, in a club setting,” says Norburn. “It’s a really good taster – individual sessions only cost £4 for half-an-hour. It’s going to be recorded for Latest TV.”

It is just one of eight premieres at this year’s festival, which opens this weekend with a quartet of never-seen-before performances.

La Serenissima performs a cabaret-style programme of 18th century Venetian music at St George’s Church tonight, including works by Vivaldi, Albinoni, Caldara and Porta – followed by a half-hour masked club night ball from 10pm soundtracked by the Fieri Consort.

Tomorrow afternoon Norburn’s own medieval group The Telling has created Climb Every Mountain, based around 13th century Spanish songs and dances performed on pilgrimage to the monastery at Montserrat at St Paul’s Church in West Street.

There are more Spanish medieval pilgrim songs courtesy of Santiago de Compostela’s Resonet supported by the BREMF Community Choir in a promenade concert at St Bartholomew’s Church on Sunday, October 26.

And tomorrow The BREMF Consort Of Voices focuses on the composer-singers the Vatican employed in the 15th and 16th century, as well as telling the scandalous stories of their employers in Rome: Popes, Patronage And Power at St Bartholomew’s Church.

Future premieres include two new Paris-set musical plays. Musica Secreta, Celestial Sirens and Brighton Festival Youth Choir tell the story of the music performed behind nunnery walls in Convent Divas on Sunday, November 2.

And the politics surrounding 120 years of the Paris Opera is explored by Le Jardin Secret and The BREMF Players in Powerplay on Saturday, November 8.

To close the festival The BREMF Players and Singers will be bringing London’s own 17th and 18th century music to the fore as composed by the likes of Purcell and Handel at St George’s Church on Sunday, November 9.

More highlights include The Sixteen investigating the music of the 17th century Polish court; a recreation of a Leipzig coffee house at Hove’s The OId Market to accompany Bach’s Coffee Cantata; and The Society Of Strange And Ancient Instruments following self-promoting actor Will Kemp’s 100-mile dance from Norwich to London in 1600.

See The Guide for further previews over the next two weeks.

For the full programme visit bremf.org.uk