My wife and I enjoy escaping, sometimes far into the past, and donning 500 year old garb and visiting the local Renaissance Faire near us. My wife is an avid wool spinner/knitter/crocheter, and while she was giving demonstrations, I decided to bring my video camera and ask if some of the wonderful musicians would like to have their performance video-taped. Despite the fact that it was about 90 degrees and extremely windy, I was able to set up and record a couple.
The first was the Cottager Minstrels, Mary and Trevor Hamer, who performed a couple of wonderful songs here:
They also are working on their own album of music, and can be found here on MySpace.
The second was "Vox Nobili", a Madrigal ensemble that is a joy to listen to. I had heard them on previous occasions at the faire, and was looking forward to working with them to capture a bit of their magic sound:
Vox Nobili are:
Sopranos: Tara Pool, Liz Lindenfeld, Angelica Marcu, Barbara Young
Altos: Susan Abernethy, Sally Dexter-Smith
Tenor: Jerry Marcu
Basses: Vincent Martin, Richard Smith
They can be hired to perform in garb for various special occasions, see their web site here.
Finally, as a bit of a dare from some of my friends (who can actually PLAY instruments), I recorded myself strumming away on my Mountain Dulcimer "Dulce", showing that I really do only know a couple of chords.
Nice leather vest, huh! Stop watching me try to play... oh, look at my socks! Those are hand spun and hand dyed wool socks that my wife made for me! There, the music is over, thank goodness!
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2 comments:
It looks like the fair was a lot of fun and the music was great. I suppose there was renaissance food too.
The clothing, the music, and the games make the renaissance seem so long ago and the world then so different from now. And yet, when I think about the long time since our ancestors dropped from the trees, five hundred years should seem like nothing.
I wonder if anyone has ever attempted a paleolithic festival?
We tend to avoid the 500 year old food and bring our own... but you know about my wife's wonderful food and can understand why :-)
I found it intriguing to learn in a recent history lecture that during the Renaissance in England, people would often dress up and pretend to be dark-ages chivalrous knights in King Arthur's time (500 years before then), so the idea of play-acting and glorifying the "days of olde" has been with us forever.
Paleolithic festivals sound fun, but wait, perhaps with a little stretch of the imagination, we may be doing those now, with Druid festivals, Burning Man, late night Drumming circles...?
-Eduard
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