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…you’ll love this…such an enjoyable listen…excellent booklet notes…an intriguing and rewarding release
Andrew McGregor, BBC Radio 3, Record Review

 

Blondel bring professionalism, musicality and enormous verve to everything they do.  Hugely stimulating and enjoyable.  We look forward to their next visit!

Gill Page, director, Medieval Music in the Dales

 

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Photographer: Sally Parkinson

Blondel is a medieval and renaissance wind band. We play shawms, recorders, bagpipes, slide trumpet, and sackbuts, which makes us stand out in an area dominated by vocal and string ensembles.

Our performances are informal, research-based, and colourful; they strike a chord with folk enthusiasts, and regular concert goers, as well as early music lovers. Our approach, inspired by the virtuosic wind players of the Middle Ages, has earned praise from both critics and audiences.

Our past performances include concerts in the Cheltenham Festival (broadcast live by the BBC), Cambridge Early Music, Brighton Early Music Festival, Trollhättan Early Music Festival, Wind Works Festival Iceland, Leeds International Medieval Congress, King’s Lynn Festival, Medieval Music in the Dales, & the Wimbledon International Music Festival.

We were commissioned by the Agincourt600 Committee to create Owre Kynge Went Forth – Henry V and the Battle of Agincourt – told in words and music to commemorate the 600th anniversary of the battle of Agincourt, which is available as a free download.

You are doing a most fantastic job at this event, people just love your music, thanks for being so brilliant, self-sufficient and collaborative

Eva Koch-Schulte, Creative Programming & Interpretation Producer at Historic Royal Palaces

 

Of arms and a woman: A chronicle of love, loss, chivalry and memory.
Released by First Hand Records

Music by Dufay, Binchois, Bedyngham, Morton, Ciconia, Landini and Machaut performed on shawms, recorders, bagpipes, sackbut, slide trumpet and percussion.

 
Dufay (shawms, sackbut, percussion)
Se la face ay pale

Ciconia (recorders)
Ray au soleyl

Landini (shawms)
Adiu, adiu dous dame

Anonymous arr. L. Gutteridge (bagpipes)
Allez a la fougere

Recording engineer: Adrian Hunter
© Blondel

 
xxx Venus Draws Her Bow to aim at a potential Lover,4- Le Roman de la Rose - 1490 [MS. Douce 195, f. 148v](1)