We arrived at Treowen on a very blustery Monday evening at the end of Storm Ciara for our three day recording session with Adrian Hunter: carrying 1 C treble, 2 G tenors, 4 D basses and 1 A bass, and a mountain of cake to keep us sustained.
We set up our studio in the great hall, moving the pool and pingpong tables out of the way and got to work that evening with the sound check.
It was a very intensive few days steered by the unflappable Adrian Hunter who guided us through the recording of a remarkable set of 16th century consort music. We are so grateful to him for his exacting musical standards, good humour and patience.
We had a couple of visitors including Anthony Pearson our photographer who came equipped with a variety of photographic hardware. Here are some pinhole camera shots of musicians in action. Thank you so much for these fabulous pictures Mr P.
We were also grateful to Michael Hamilton from Real Music Videos who made a couple of evocative films during the recording process. You can look at them both here on our website media page.
We structured the sessions by grouping the pieces into high and low consorts. The occasional 3 part piece was useful so that the one not playing could get the dinner ready. Treowen was an idyllic setting and there were few distractions: the wind had died down by day 2, and the only noise came from sheep bleating at feeding time and tweeting birds.
Early morning photos taken before breakfast – no time for loitering in the beautiful garden!
Adrian is still hard at work and we are looking forward to hearing the first edits soon. Richard Jones’ Linarol style renaissance viols sound wonderful together and we enjoy exploring their very special and varied sound-world. Thank you to all those who have bought the disk in advance and to our very generous sponsors.
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We are playing at the Barber Institute, Birmingham University on Friday 20th March at 1pm in their lunchtime concert series – it is free and tickets are not required. We hope to see you there for a concert of innovative music for viols Nouvelle Musique.
And tickets are selling fast for our concert at Discoed in May:
