Late bookings accepted until Thursday 16th July
We’ve made one last extension of our booking deadline. You’ll need to book, pay, and choose your course options all before midnight on Thursday, and we can squeeze you in.
Can’t come to HISS this year? Could you sponsor a student, donate to our new hardship fund, or help out HISS?
Recruit friends to come with you and save up to £100!
A new offer for 2026
Bring one friend and get £20 off your course fee (or £20 back if you’ve already paid)
Bring two friends and get £50 off (or £50 back)
Bring three friends and get £100!
You’ll need to let us know your friends’ details before they book, and once they’ve paid you can claim your discount – contact us at hissenquiries@gmail.com.
Come and sing (or play) Spem in Alium
Always wanted to have a go at Thomas Tallis’s amazing motet in forty parts?
If numbers allow, this will be our Wednesday afternoon session, with both a singer and an instrument on every part. Sign up now!
If we don’t have the numbers to make it work comfortably, we’ll do the equally amazing but rather easier 40-part motet by Alessandro Striggio that inspired Tallis to write Spem – Ecce beatam lucem.
SIX student bursaries available
We are so grateful to North East Early Music Forum, who generously fund our bursaries for students in full-time education on a music course.
These cover the full cost of tuition and accommodation – all you will need to pay are your transport costs (and we will help with lifts if we can). This year we can take up to six students.
For HISS 2026 we are delighted to have two special guest tutors . . .
Emily Saville was guest teacher for historical trombone at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in 2023-4, and was the first student to obtain a Pedagogy Master’s in Historical Trombone at the same institution, under the joint tutelage of Catherine Motuz and Michael Büttler. In June 2025 she was appointed teacher for Baroque Trombone at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis Musikschule (CH). Emily enjoys teaching on numerous courses and workshops, including at the Landesmusikakademie Rheinland-Pfalz (DE), on La Furta’s summer and winter courses (CH), and now at HISS! She has taken an active role in learning and participation projects with such organisations as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Stour Early Music Festival, Glyndebourne Opera House, and the English Touring Opera. Emily will be joining us from her return visits in July to Alte Musik Kurs, Landesmusikakademie Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany and La Furta: Sommerkurs Alte Musik, Aarau, Switzerland. See her in performance in Francesca Caccini’s Maria, dolce Maria (Primo Libro delle Musiche Florence, 1618) here.
Eric Thomas is a lutenist based in Edinburgh, and plays with leading ensembles including the Dunedin Consort, Concerto Caledonia, RSNO, New Trinity Baroque, and Dowland Works with Dame Emma Kirkby. He studied jointly at The University of Glasgow and the Royal Conservatiore of Scotland, under the supervision of John Butt and receiving lute tuition from Jamie Akers, then continuing studies at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, studying lute and theorbo with Fred Jacobs. He has also attended the Urbino Early Music Festival (studying with Paul O’Dette) & Dartington International Summer School (lessons with David Miller). As a Continuo Foundation emerging artist, he has performed through the UK including at the York Early Music Centre, and the Wigmore Hall. You can see him in action at a recent lunchtime comvert at St Andrew’s University in recital with Elizabeth Unsworth-Wilson (mezzo-soprano). They gave a programme of 17th-century songs and lute pieces, ranging from England to Italy. The livestream can be seen here.