Workshop: Music for Medieval Street Band

The International Guild of Town Pipers, Blondel & Colchester Early Music present:
Music for Medieval Street Band
Workshop for wind players on music from the 14th & 15th centuries

Tutors: Belinda Paul, Lizzie Gutteridge & Emily Baines.

10.00am-5.30pm on Saturday 18th November 2017 at St Andrew’s Church & Hall, Marks Tey, CO6 1LW.

The IGTP would like to invite players of Medieval loud winds (shawms, slide trumpets, sackbuts & cornetts as well as capped reeds) for a one day workshop exploring repertoire from the 14th & 15th centuries. Other instruments such as bagpipes and recorders can be used in some sessions. The workshop will be led by leading wind players in the field of Medieval wind playing from Blondel – Belinda Paul, Lizzie Gutteridge & Emily Baines.

The repertoire:
This weekend will explore music from composers active during the 14th & 15th centuries which has been found to work well on wind instruments. We will be focussing on the classic Medieval Waits combinations of shawms with trumpets and sackbuts, there will also be some sessions where bagpipes can work alongside the shawm band and where either drones or quieter instruments will come into their own. Many of the pieces played are either chansons or dances but a few definite examples of instrumental works are also available. Composers include Machaut, Dufay, Morton and Binchois.

Programme of events:

Hall Church Committee Room
10.00 am Welcome/Tea
10.30 am Tutti session lead by Lizzie (Belinda assisting) Recorder surgery with Emily
11.30 am Tea/Coffee break
12.00 noon Ornamentation session with Emily Drones & friends session with Lizzie Reed surgery with Belinda
1.30 pm Lunch break
2.30 pm “Medieval avant-garde” with Belinda & Emily “Gut zu blasen” with Lizzie
4.00 pm Tea/Coffee break
4.30 pm Tutti session showing pieces covered
5.30 pm End

Session details:
The morning tutti session will offer a chance for everyone to get warmed up playing together before we start to specialise. The repertoire covered will be (relatively) simple.

Emily’s morning ornamentation session will give some ideas of how you can elaborate on your part in Medieval music with a variety of types of ornaments including gracing as well as divisions.
OR
Lizzie’s Drones & Friends session will combine bagpipes, gurdies etc. playing in G (&D) with other wind instruments as often found in Medieval iconography. We’ll be playing arrangements of dances and of popular songs. Percussionists also welcome.

Belinda and Emily’s “Medieval avant-garde” session is a chance to dip your toes in at the more extreme edges of Medieval writing: crazy canons, wacky harmonies, polyrhythm and polytonality, macaronic motets and melodies that invert on themselves. We’ll start gently and see where we end up! Recorder and string players are welcome to join this session.
OR
Lizzie’s “Gut zu blazen” session will look at some of the more fanfare-like instrumental pieces to be found. Percussionists welcome.

The final tutti session will offer the opportunity for a final play through of favourite pieces from the day’s workshops. Participants will also be able to find out some of what happened in the sessions in which they were not present and may be able to compare different versions of the same pieces.

Concert:

In addition there will be a concert by Blondel in the church the following afternoon as part of the Colchester Early Music series (19th November, 2.30-3.30pm, see below). Workshops participants will be entitled to a £1 discount on concert tickets. Please see www.colchesterearlymusic.org.uk for further details.

Tutors:

Belinda Paul studied modern oboe at the VCA (University of Melbourne.). She won a scholarship to study baroque and classical oboe in the Netherlands with Frank de Bruine and Ku Ebbinge. Now based in London, she plays with orchestras such as the Academy of Ancient Music, Gabrieli Consort & Players and La Stagione Frankfurt. She has recorded with the Academy of Ancient Music, Ex Cathedra and The Hanover Band; her operatic engagements include a stint at St Petersburg’s Hermitage Theatre and the Utrecht Festival. Belinda has performed many of the major romantic orchestral works both in the UK and abroad. She studied romantic oboe with Marcel Ponseele, topping her year at Philippe Herreweghe’s Abbaye aux Dames course in France. She has appeared with I Fagiolini and The City Musick, and taken part in in the West End transfer of the Globe’s production of Richard III, and in the National Theatre’s production of Everyman.

Belinda

Lizzie Gutteridge took up playing shawm as a part of the historical re-enactment movement to re-form Waits bands throughout the country, then decided to pursue it further and make it her main occupation. Since 2007 Lizzie has studied with some of the country’s leading Renaissance wind players at Cambridge and Dartington summer schools and at Guildhall. She plays a wide range of other historical instruments, including bagpipes, recorders, curtals and fiddles. Lizzie now performs up and down the country, in and out of historical costume, as a member of Blondel and The York Waits. Freelance engagements have included the West End transfer of the Globe’s “Nell Gwynn”, “The Knight of the Burning Pestle” at the Wanamaker Theatre, performances in Morocco and London with Passamezzo, and large scale events at Hampton Court and the Tower of London. She is a trustee of the International Guild of Town Pipers.

Lizzie

Emily Baines is a freelance player of historical/folk woodwinds, soprano singer and musical director. She trained in recorder and singing at the University of Hull, the Royal Conservatory The Hague, and most recently at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She has worked as a guest lecturer at GSMD and the University of Hull and is now studying as a scholarship student on GSMD’s Doctoral Programme. Emily performs for many period instrument ensembles and contemporary groups including the Gabrieli Consort, BREMF Renaissance Players, L’Avventura London and The Harp Consort. She is a co-founder of Blondel, The Fellowshippe of Musickers and The Musicians of London Wall. She was Musical Director of Jessica Swayle’s “Nell Gwynn” at the Apollo Theatre and the Globe, and has performed in/directed productions with Jericho House, Just Enough Theatre Companies, the Globe (Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, Tis Pity She’s A Whore, Broadway transfers of Twelfth Night and Richard III).

Emily

Venue:
St Andrew’s Church in Marks Tey is a Medieval church with mod cons, including under floor heating, modern lighting, moveable seating, disabled access, and an adjacent hall with toilets & kitchen. The church is close to the A12 and A120, there is a large free car park and Marks Tey train station is 10 minutes walk away.

St Andrews Church
Photographer: Paul Farmer. Used here under the “CC Share-Alike” licence.

Catering::
Tea, coffee and biscuits will be available during breaks. However we recommend that you bring a packed lunch with you. There are village shops in Marks Tey but they are a couple of minutes drive or 10-15 minutes walk away from the church.

Fees::
The fee for the day’s participation will be £26 per person. Cheques should be made payable to “The International Guild of Town Pipers” and posted to Lizzie Gutteridge, 20 Honywood Close, Marks Tey, Colchester, Essex, CO6 1HN along with your completed application form. Alternatively you can email your form to [email protected] and pay by paypal using the donate button on the Waits Website, being sure to label your donation with your name and “November Workshop”.