Saturday 23 April 2022
On Saturday 23 April you can hear us playing music from the time of Shakespeare as part of the ‘Sonnet Saunter’ event for the Mayfield Festival run by the Wateryard Group. You can enjoy an hour’s walk around the village punctuated by actors reading sonnets by the bard at intervals around the route, and then enjoy some Tudor music whilst you partake of refreshments. Tickets can be purchased here and you can find out more about the festival here.
17 February 1.10pm
We are pleased to be returning to Redhill to participate in the lunchtime concert series at St Matthew’s church. Our programme will present vocal and instrumental music that reflects various aspects of medieval and renaissance life such as war and conflict, prayer and devotion, love and courtship, feasting and dancing.
David was in the studio recently recording with indie band Alt-J for their forthcoming album The Dream, which will include some of Faronel’s bagpipes, crumhorns, cornamusen and racketts. The recording was done in an appropriately medieval setting – the great hall of the 15th century Papermill near Benenden.
The album will be released on 11 February 2022.
The combination of gin and early music being a particularly pleasurable one, David was delighted to be invited to take part in the podcast series Gin & Topic recently. His tipple of choice was Anno’s Extreme 95 – the world’s strongest gin! David talked to hosts Sarah and Áine about medieval and renaissance music and demonstrated some instruments for them. You can hear the results from April 9th here.
Faronel will be on the virtual stage of the online Medieval Music in the Dales Festival on 20th March at about 7.25pm. We will be performing two songs by St Godric of Finchale, and the virelai Par maintes foys by Jehan Vaillant. You can hear our contribution (starting at 06.11) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bSuQ-cVTPQ
St John the Baptist, Clayton, West Sussex, 7.30pm, 22 June 2019
Tickets £10, available on the door
We’re looking forward to our visit to the beautiful church of St John the Baptist in Clayton, West Sussex on 22 June 2019. We performed there in 2017 when we presented a programme exploring the beautiful wall paintings. This year we will be exploring the 14th and 15th centuries in the first half of the concert and then looking at music from the last two Tudor courts in the second half.
We are including some intriguing English songs from the 14th century and a selection of pieces from the Libre vermell, a famous collection of music for pilgrimage
As usual we will be playing instruments that are appropriate to the music of each period, including harp, psaltery, bagpipes, symphonie, rebec, medieval fiddle, recorders, crumhorns and racketts.
On March 1st we took part in a Medieval Day held at Saint Ronan’s School in Hawkhurst, Kent, where David is Director of Music. The children participated in workshops in music, history, English and much else throughout the day, and we also contributed a medieval dimension to the Friday evening chapel service in conjunction with the chapel choir. The revels rounded off with a medieval banquet at which we provided a musical backdrop to the feasting, drinking and good companye!
As an example of what can be achieved in a school workshop, here is a group of 10 and 11 year olds who learned to play Les Bouffons in their session. Not bad for 30 minutes’ work!
Although we don’t wear period fancy dress for concerts, we made an exception for the banquet, and were delighted to welcome Debbie Katis, Saint Ronan’s music administrator, to boost the percussion!
St Matthew’s Church, Redhill, Surrey
Thursday 21st February 2019 1.10pm
We were delighted to have been invited back to St Matthew’s Church, Redhill to perform in their lunchtime concert series in February. Our programme featured music from the Tudor period, including works by Henry VIII himself and composers associated with the Tudor court such as Cornysh, Holborne and Gibbons. We also included several pieces that reflect David’s recent research in re-assessing late sixteenth-century keyboard manuscripts as sources of consort works, including pieces derived from the Mulliner Book and from GB-Lbl. Royal. App. 58, a source dating from the 1520s.
Bridge Cottage, Uckfield, East Sussex
Tuesday 10 July 2018 7.30pm
Bridge Cottage in Uckfield is a wealden hall house built in around 1436; it has recently been restored as a venue for community events and a popular concert series. Our concert took place in the hall chamber and featured the type of repertoire from the 14th to 16th centuries that itinerant musicians would have performed in domestic spaces such as this.
The concert was given as part of the Uckfield Festival and was screened live via a videolink in another space due to demand: one wonders what the 15th century residents of Bridge Cottage would have thought of it all!
St John the Baptist, Clayton, West Sussex, 2.30pm, 29 April 2018
Clayton church has a magnificent set of wall paintings created by the monks of Lewes Priory in the 12th century. They are the finest of a series of similar paintings in several churches in the area. The most impressive feature is the Doom painting over the chancel arch, depicting the Day of Judgement in all its gory detail.
Our concert began with music inspired by the paintings, including a number of English works from the medieval period featuring voices, rebecs, harp and psaltery, and in the second half featured renaissance music for various types of wind consort, including recorders, shawms, crumhorns, curtal, rackett, and cornamusen.
