A Handful of Pleasant Delights. A concert of Elizabethan music, words and song.

The concert is approximately 2 hours long with a 20 minute interval.

A programme of music, words and song illustrating aspects of life in Elizabethan England – from the Court to the country, the playhouse, the streets and the Church.

A variety of lutesongs, broadside ballads, theatre songs, madrigals, consort songs, instrumental divisions, masque music, sacred music and dance tunes.

Includes music by Thomas Morley, Richard Edwards, William Byrd, John Dowland, Richard Allison and Daniel Bachiler, and words by George Peele, Ben Jonson, and Chidiock Tichborne.

Passamezzo

Eleanor Cramer: soprano, bass viol

Richard de Winter: baritone, actor

Robin Jeffrey: lute, cittern

Alison Kinder: viols, recorders

Tamsin Lewis: Renaissance violin, viols, alto

Passamezzo is an established early music ensemble known for their ability to bring historical events to life through their engaging performances and programming. They specialize in English Tudor and Stuart repertoire.

A group of musicians, singers, actors and dancers, with years of experience as historical interpreters, the ensemble delights in all aspects of musical life, from the intimacy of the lute song, to the brash raucousness of the broadside ballad, from the sacred part song, to the profane insanity of bedlamite mad songs. The programmes are carefully researched with music frequently taken from manuscript sources, unearthing pieces that have lain hidden for centuries. It is this range of material and overall spectacle, combined with the informative and accessible manner of their presentation, that makes Passamezzo such an engaging group.

They have played in a great variety of venues including the British Museum; the Victoria and Albert Museum; Shakespeare's Globe Theatre; Hampton Court Palace and in theatres, concert halls, stately homes, churches, palaces and ruins throughout Britain.

Passamezzo also work with with Moroccan Sufi musicians, Ensemble Mogador Soufie, performing 17th Century English and Moroccan music in both countries.

Television credits include: Danny Dyer's Right Royal Family; (BBC1); Lucy Worsley's Twelve Days of Tudor Christmas; Howard Goodall's The Truth about Carols (BBC2); Big Brother (Channel 4); Becoming Elizabeth (Starz).

Eleanor Cramer

Eleanor started her vocal studies at the junior department of the Royal Academy of Music, where she also studied cello. She began singing at Cambridge when she won a choral award at Clare College Cambridge. She went on to sing with the choir of Sidney Sussex College Cambridge, and with the Lady Frances Singers; she has also sung with the Choir of London in collaboration with the RPO. Her solo work has included soprano arias in Bach's St John Passion at St John's, Cambridge, and Snape Maltings, and Miles in Britten's Turn of the Screw with Seastar Opera. In addition to several CDs with Passamezzo, her recording work includes the vocal consort Alamire and solo tracks on a CD of Weelkes with the viol consort Fretwork. Eleanor is also a midwife.

Richard de Winter

Richard was a chorister at Westminster Cathedral, and a choral scholar at Durham Cathedral, before studying musical theatre at the Royal Academy of Music. Since graduating, Richard has performed in a variety of guises, including roles in three original musicals at the Edinburgh Fringe, a stint in the award-winning topical sketch show NewsRevue at the Canal Cafe Theatre and tours of both the UK and the Far East of an adaptation of Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. Last year he toured Spain with the Parlon Film Company, playing Geoffrey Chaucer and a Tajik patriarch (not in the same show), before being a chorus baritone in Mahogany Opera’s production of Britten’s Church Parables.

Richard also performs ukulele-based stand-up, creates characters for A Door in a Wall, a company that provides live murder mystery events, and is a historical interpreter at Hampton Court and the Tower of London.

Robin Jeffrey

Robin has played and recorded with many of the well-known names in the early music field, including The Sixteen, The King’s Consort, English Baroque Soloists, The Purcell Quartet and Red Byrd, and with ensembles such as the English Chamber Orchestra, The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and the BBC Concert Orchestra. He has a long track record in opera and stage music, playing for productions at the National Theatre, English National Opera, Shakespeare’s Globe, Opera North and many others.

Besides his work in early music he is active in the performance of Middle Eastern classical and traditional music, playing the oud, laouto and tambour , and he has performed traditional Jewish music internationally with the Burning Bush. He regularly gives recitals accompanying soprano Alessandra Testai, in a repertoire ranging from Renaissance Italy to the Ottoman Empire, taking in various European folk traditions along the way.

Alison Kinder

Alison read music at Oxford and was then given a scholarship by Trinity College of Music where she studied viol with Alison Crum, being awarded the college’s Silver Medal for Early Music Studies. She is a founder member of Chelys consort of viols where she enjoys researching, performing and recording programmes covering all aspects of consort music. She has a particular interest in 'Renaissance' viols (early viols made with no soundpost) with The Linarol Consort who play on copies of the earliest surviving viol made by Francesco Linarol. Venturing into the 18th Century with a beautiful 7-string viol named Flo, Alison plays with lutenist Lynda Sayce in Apollo's Revels, trio sonata group Saltarello, and the Christian Baroque ensemble Dei Gratia, where she also plays baroque violin. Alison has a great love of working with singers, and the affinity between the sound of the viol and the voice. One of her favourite places to be is as the gamba player with Musica Secreta, where a recent highlight has been the newly discovered complete Lamentations of Jeremiah by Antoine Brumel.  A keen teacher of both children and adults, Alison is a tutor on a number of Early Music courses including the Easter Early Music Course and Norvis, and she regularly leads workshops for the various Early Music Fora. She is co-director of Rondo Viol Academy, teaches viol and violin both privately and in schools, and directs the Warwickshire Youth Waits, a Renaissance band for young players. Alison has had a number of educational books published with colleague and fellow viol player Jacqui Robertson-Wade. They include group teaching material for viols and recorders, and a children’s music theory series called 'The Notehouse People'. She has also published a modern edition of the divisions from Christopher Simpson’s 'Division Viol' treatise.

Tamsin Lewis

Tamsin studied violin at the Florence Conservatoire before reading Classics and Italian at Oxford. Now a specialist in historical music, she has written, arranged, directed and played music for a number of theatre productions at venues including Shakespeare’s Globe, the Rose Theatre and Hampton Court, and has collaborated with theatre and dance historians and practitioners to reconstruct masques and other court entertainments for Historic Royal Palaces and at other heritage sites.

Tamsin is an associate lecturer in Renaissance art and music at the Courtauld Institute, and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She has written a number of books and articles on early modern music and society.

Recent work in film and television includes playing the valachord in Solo (a Star Wars Story), wassailing with Gareth Malone in Britain’s Christmas Story; and working as a historical and musical consultant on Firebrand, A Discovery of Witches and Draw on Sweet Night.

Tamsin is a member of the Lions part theatre company and appears in their Globe-based festivals as a violin-playing bear.