Tuesday 8th July 2025
Venue: Chawton House
12pm: Birthday Concert
2, 3 & 4pm: Short Presentations
7pm: The Jane Austen Playlist
Join us for an Austen Music Celebration, led by Austen music specialists, Gillian Dooley and Laura Klein, with lunchtime and evening concerts, and short musical presentations in between.
Join internationally renowned Austen music scholars and performers Laura Klein and Gillian Dooley for a day of voice and piano music in Chawton House’s Dining Room. Watch as they perform the music that Austen knew, surrounded by the people and furniture familiar to her, to celebrate her life and legacy.
At 2, 3, and 4pm, House & Gardens ticket holders can enjoy brief Austen music selections.
There will be two ticketed performances:
Jane Austen Birthday Concert, 12pm
Themes include:
- A song published in 1775
- Some nursery rhymes from Austen’s manuscript music books
- Jack and Alice (1787-1790)
- Henry and Eliza (1787-1788)
- Love and Freindship (1790)
- Lesley Castle (1792)
- History of England: Elizabeth (1791)
- A Collection of letters (1792)
- Frederic and Elfrida (1787-1790)
Tickets: £20 (including House & Gardens entry)
Jane Austen Playlist: Love and Music of Regency England, 7pm
Featuring music from the Austen Family Music Books and readings from her novels. Adapted for the stage by Laura Klein.
Performers
Director and Pianist: Laura Klein
Narrator and Soprano: Gillian Dooley
Soprano: Louisa Hunter-Bradley
Actor: Sasha Dean
Themes
- SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
- PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
- MANSFIELD PARK
—INTERMISSION— - EMMA
- NORTHANGER ABBEY
- PERSUASION
FINALE
Tickets: £25.40 (including a glass of fizz on arrival)
About the Project
The Jane Austen Playlist, founded by Laura Klein in 2019, is a historical music project featuring the music of the Austen family in digitized notations, companion recordings, and dramatically narrated performances. Containing over 600 songs and pieces for various instruments, this collection of 18 manuscripts comprises printed and handwritten works curated over time by the female members of the Austen family, several in Jane Austen’s own hand.
More information, including recordings, score details, and performances, are available at www.thejaneaustenplaylist.com and on social media platforms by following @thejaneaustenplaylist.
About the Performers
Gillian Dooley is an Honorary Associate Professor in English Literature at Flinders University in South Australia, where she was Special Collections Librarian 1999-2015 and Publishing Support Librarian 2016-2017. Her particular interest is in music and literature, and as a singer and pianist she often organises and performs in programs of music with literary themes. A major project completed in 2017 was the detailed cataloguing of the digitised music collection of Jane Austen and her family, and her book She Played and Sang: Jane Austen and Music was published by Manchester University Press in March 2024. She is currently working with Laura Klein and the Blackie House Library and Museum on the Jane Austen Music Books, to include a selection of songs and piano pieces from the Austen music collections transcribed and arranged for performance. Visit the Jane Austen’s Music website.
Laura Klein is a US-based performer, educator, and musicologist specializing in early keyboard music and performance practice. A PhD candidate in historical musicology and performance practice at The University of Colorado Boulder, she holds degrees in Piano Performance from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, NJ, and Mars Hill University in Mars Hill, NC. She is alumna of Brevard Music Center and the International Scholar Laureate Program through the Juilliard School of Music. A Jane Austen scholar, Klein founded The Jane Austen Playlist in 2019, which combines her lifelong zeal for 18th-century music and all things Jane. Her publications include “Pride and Prejudice and the Piano: Pianofortes and Music in Jane Austen’s Life and Literature” in Persuasions 45 (2023) and a joint article with Gillian Dooley, “Drama in Words and Music: Jane Austen Sings: A Program of Theatre Music from the Austen Family Music Collections” in Persuasions On-Line 45/1 (2024).
Louisa Hunter-Bradley is a sought-after classical performer (voice and recorder) in Australia, the UK and Europe. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music London and has performed with groups including Opera Australia, Pinchgut Opera, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Past Echoes, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and as principal artist with Victorian Opera in their inaugural year. Louisa currently works as a research associate at King’s College London, Music Consultant at the World-Heritage site Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, as the Classical Music Lead for the Alton Arts Festival, and as music curator at Chawton House.