Blackdowns Early Music Projects: Iberian treasury of renaissance choral music

Blackdowns Early Music Projects are hosting singers and players in its home base in Culmstock over the May Day Bank holiday weekend. Principal music director JanJoost van Elburg will be working with Blackdowns Early Music Projects's experienced singers on a repertoire of renaissance Iberian choral works. Meanwhile the first South Wes Viol Fest tutors Caroline Ritchie and Henrik Persson will be joined by fellow Newe Vialles member Lynda Sayce on theorbo to give a sparkling recital entitled Folies et Folettes on Sunday May 6th at 8pm in All Saints' Church, Culmstock, EX15 3JD.

Voices and viols will work together under the expert direction of JanJoost van Elburg on Monday May 7th at 6pm in the Church of St John the Baptist, Wellington TA21 8QY. In this concert, called Iberian Treasury, singers and players will perform Spanish and Portuguese choral music drawn from the entire span of the renaissance period, from the work of the Spaniard Cristobal Morales, born in 1500, right up to that of the Portuguese João Rodrigues Esteves who died in 1751. In between these two important musicians came others, such as Francisco Guerrero, Tomas Luis de Victoria, Juan Esquivel, Duarte Lobo and Manuel Cardoso all of whom thoroughly deserve their places in the Treasury. Newe Vialles and their viol tutees will accompany the singers in several of the pieces together with Martin Perkins on organ.