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ENSEMBLE INFO

Ensemble Contact:

Email:

heidifardell@hotmail.com

2022

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

We’re applying for a concert tour of 9 performances (including 2 school workshops) of our new programme ‘What a Wonderful World’ at new venues: Huddersfield, Lancaster, Bolton, Barnard Castle, Dersingham plus Combe, Headington, Coventry and Chacombe aiming to reach new audiences with high quality early music. The instrumentation includes a wide variety of recorders, lutes, viols and flutes with percussion and more! It’s a spectacle for the eyes and ears! The programme explores aspects of early modern life which people found wonderful and awe-inspiring - from mythology to mathematics, from astrology to astronomy - and from inexplicable weather to a lost whale. We include the late Elizabethan piece ‘Heaven and Earth’, music by Galileo’s his father and brother, music by William Herschel, (organist and composer, Court Astronomer to George III, the discoverer of Uranus, and the first president of the Royal Astronomical Society), an anonymous ballad celebrating Chester’s unexpected monstrous fish resonates and Munday’s programmatic Fantasia perfectly capturing the frustratingly changeable weather of the British Isles. The age of Science was also the age of Mathematics, which produced puzzle canons, eye music, and intricately worked pieces held together by repeating ground basses. Bach’s genius springs to mind and the extraordinary proportional contortions of Christopher Tye’s aptly named ‘Sit Fast’ which find a baroque mirror in Henry Purcell’s apparently effortless double canon ‘for the followers of the night’. We include themes of Love (Amarilli Mia Bella) as well as magic and fairies with a suite of pieces from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen. The ancient world, both historical and mythological, continued to inspire wonder as scholars rediscovered the Ancients, and historians sought to untangle the truths and the myths. The famous Telemann trio sonata with movements titled after historical and mythological heroines, shows how widely these stories were known, and how deeply ingrained in baroque culture. In our work we always aim to be accessible, educational, inclusive and entertaining. All the music is carefully researched, bringing innovative and interesting stories about lesser-known (and more widely known) figures in early music. We speak with our audiences about the music, the composers and the instruments. This tour is a mixture of self-promoted, community efforts and venue promotion, working in partnership with the venue/community who are hosting. Our target audience is all ages, welcoming everyone to our concerts. Often, our audiences tell us it’s their first experience of early music and they’re keen to hear more. We believe our programme is of outstanding artistic merit and this tour is creating meaningful work for 4 professional freelance period musicians. Where can, we lift share to reduce carbon emissions and costs. We are passionate about bringing live music to all, especially new communities with little access.

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