The Tudor Fair Blog
Suzi Digby talks 500 years of choral music in 34 minutes.
In 2011 I met Suzi Digby via Twitter. Having found out that she is a choral goddess and was in Los Angeles for a visiting professorship in choral conducting and arts leadership, I immediately asked if I could take her to coffee and meet her. I visited her in Queen’s…
Old Music Monday: The colorful life of Francesco Maria Veracini
One of the great debates in classical music right now is whether video game music should be included in the genre of classical, even when a symphony is playing it. I’ve long been a fan of the Oblivion soundtrack, and downloaded it before these kinds of scores were available…
Old Music Monday: Biber’s Resurrection Sonata
There’s something about Baroque music that just screams Autumn to me. I don’t know where it comes from – I suppose the main baroque music my family listened to growing up would have been a recording of the Messiah which would begin its heavy Christmas rotation soon after Halloween, so…
launching the bigworld tour company, and why I love early choral music
This year I am embarking on a new project as an entrepreneur who leads cultural tours to England, specializing in trips to listen to great choral services in cathedrals. My dear friend Jim and I are building a tour company, our first trip is scheduled for May 2016, and I’ve been working on…
Old Music Monday: Tudor Anthems from the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge
One of the things I love about Spotify is that when you ‘follow’ an artist (ie click ‘follow’ on their artist page), you get a notification whenever a new album from that artist is added to the database of music. I adore that. I don’t have the time to keep…
Random Friday Fun Facts: Dr. David Skinner and the music of the 16th century
About a month ago I was in the UK for a girls’ weekend (by myself), and as I’ve been trying to do more with my Renaissance English History Podcast lately (like my Tudor Minutes on youtube), I decided to find an interesting person to interview for the show. At the…
Old Music Monday: The Spy’s Choirbook from Alamire
A few weeks ago I had the privilege of going to Sidney Sussex College, in Cambridge, and interviewing Dr. David Skinner, the choral director there, and a brilliant musicologist. In addition to being incredibly charming, he is also bursting with information which he relays in an approachable way. I taped…
Old Music Monday: Voces Thules and the music of Medieval Iceland
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stNVhyvxJTA?list=PL954osbzAArlFZCstNqg0cC9U7ZqXCH_E] I’m going to Iceland next week. I first went there in 2012, just for a few days, at the suggestion of several friends who had visited and loved it. We were on an extended visit to the UK, and decided to take a few days to make the…
Old Music Monday: The Fasch Clan
Yep, I’ve had a little break from blogging recently, mostly doing a lot of writing and working and other fun creative things. But let’s get back to business, shall we? Everyone who has studied even a smidgen of music has heard about the Bach clan. Johann Sebastian and his son…
Old Music Monday: Blow Northern Wynd
I’ve been busy the past few days getting another Renaissance English History Podcast episode researched, written, recorded, and posted. I’m always getting emails and facebook messages asking me what the music is that I use in the intro. So I decided to do my Old Music Monday on the intro…
Old Music Monday: Christmas Edition
This week the Old Music that I’ve been listening to has centered around Yuletide, specifically a hyperion recording of the Sixteen from 1987 called Christmas Music from Medieval and Renaissance Europe. As usual, Hyperion doesn’t work with Spotify (grrrr) so I also have been streaming Christmas with the Tallis Scholars. …
Old Music Monday: The Agincourt Carol
While browsing on youtube this weekend (I love that sentence because it implies long childfree days spent clicking from one interesting program to the next) I found this 2013 BBC documentary from David Starkey, the most fabulous British historian (and who puts on a fabulous show in the 1980’s Channel…