On 25 November 2022, some of the brightest lights in European early music gathered in that most convivial of cities, Dublin. The occasion was a rejuvenated edition of the REMA Awards, celebrating the best of early music across the continent and rewarding the achievements of those who ensure the sector remains as vibrant, relevant and innovative as it can be.

Not only was the event at the National Concert Hall in Dublin a chance to recognize the best of this, it was a congenial meeting in the spirit of REMA itself – an opportunity to meet, network, share and communicate in the polyphonic spirit of so much of the music we cherish. As hosts, the Irish Baroque Orchestra fully lived up to their capital city’s reputation for hospitality.

The rebooted biennial REMA awards recognized outstanding achievements in 12 categories judged by a jury of industry experts and early music professionals, including Gramophone’s Editor and early music enthusiast Martin Cullingford. Examples of best practice were held up in three areas: Audience Engagement, Professional Cooperation and Heritage and Repertoire.

In the latter domain, the Helicona Project took the Award for Cross Border Project of the Year for a multi-disciplinary, historical approach to musical improvisation that has truly broken new ground - a world-uniting blend of early and improvisatory music, horse-riding, fencing, theatre and dance all informed by history. ‘It is important go to back to the past to find the origin of the expressive spark,’ said Davide Monti of the Helicona Project.

The International Centre for Medieval Music in Valencia took the Extra-European Project of the Year Award for its project Instrumentarium Musical Alfonsí, further advancing the centre’s work in examining primitive instruments, tunings and interpretation.

Dutch choir Cappella Pratensis took the Heritage Project of the Year Award for its pioneering CD recording Apostola apostolorum, bringing to light music from Den Bosch Choirbook. The group’s co-leader, Peter de Laurentiis commented on how thrilling it was to meet with the fellow nominees: ‘we are inspired by what they do.’

Violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte took the Ambassador of the Year Award in recognition of his unmatched work advocating for the sector across the world. ‘It has always been my obligation to defend the music of forgotten or unknown composers,’ he said, ‘so I am very touched by this award.’

In the area of Professional Cooperation, Festival Internacional de Música Antigua de Sierra Espuña took the award for Best Capacity Building Project of the Year for ECOS Labs, a fertile residential programme in which emerging early music groups can share ideas and expertise – and, more importantly, leave audiences with something to muse deeply on.

Emerging European Ensembles took the Award for the Year’s Best Support Programme for Young Artists in recognition of its inventive methods of connecting and promoting new groups. Accepting the award, Isabelle Battioni of CCR Ambronay, which administrates the scheme, referred to the 215 artists who have benefited from involvement over the past eight years. ‘This is a smashing evening for us,’ she said, willing all the scheme’s audiences in France to share in the award.

The New Technology of the Year Award was taken by Vocal Music Instrumentation Index, which is busy efficiently cataloguing thousands of movements of Baroque vocal music for anyone to browse. This was another of those brilliant ideas incubated by the silence of the Covid-19 pandemic, and means musicians or enthusiasts can now search for early music by its scoring, potentially giving thousands of works new life.

Ensemble La Rêveuse took the Transition Advocate of the Year Award in recognition of its thought-provoking project Le Carnaval des Animaux en Péril, which dares to confront the issue of climate change and extinction with humour and profundity in a project that mixed music and ecology like never before when it was first performed a the Philharmonie de paris in 2021.

Audience Engagement is central to REMA’s objectives, and there were four eminent winners in this area beginning with Ensemble Masques’s L’Échappée, a truck converted into a mobile concert hall that recreates the atmosphere of Baroque splendour. Forty spectators can sit inside the truck for a concert, which allows citizens in the wine-rich but culturally sporadic region of Burgundy to experience first class classical music and ‘travel back in time,’ according to Olivier Fortin of Ensembles Masques.

(in)sight-reading enlightenment was handed the Media Award for its engrossing podcast on the subject of meeting a new score for the first time. ‘This brings us closer to the time when making music at home was a commonplace concept’ said Darina Ablogina,t he host and creator, ‘thanks for noticing our interest in artistic process’.

I Fagiolini took the Music Clip of the Year Award for its striking short film based on Janequin’s La chasse, directed by John La Bouchardière - one of the latest in a series of films bringing sixteenth-century vocal music to life. ‘This is music with a social history,’ said Robert Hollingworth, accepting the award, ‘the use of film in particular really brings it to life.’

Perhaps most inspiringly of all, Holland Baroque was handed the Award for Education Project of the Year for their unprecedented project to take music by Handel and others to the South American republic of Suriname - a deeply touching, engrossing project even from the distance of a screen. ‘We found that the people of Suriname don’t have a lot, but they have a love of music,’ said Holland Baroque’s Luuk van Geffen, ‘and that’s also the greatest thing about being part of REMA’

At the end of 2023, call for submissions for the next REMA Awards will be open, in preparation for the ceremony in Stockholm in June 2024.