Katharine Wootton Shakespeare’s Globe in London might be currently trying out midnight matinees for theatre owls, but here in York, the National Centre for Early Music are giving music moonlighters a chance to experience late-night melodies in the echoing acoustics of the Gothic York Minster.
As part of the imove shenanigans which forms Yorkshire’s Cultural Olympiad programme, the National Centre of Early Music is hosting I Fagiolini’s Late Night Striggio Illuminated Promenade Performance. On 12 July, the centuries old stone and stained glass windows of the Minster will be transformed into a magical world of lights and music as some of the UK’s finest artists play a kaleidoscope of voices and sounds upon our city’s ancient landmark.
The ‘prom-style’ performance will be a late-night edition of an early-evening concert developed as part of imove’s creative programme that delves into the way humans move, live and take shape in the world around them.
I Fagiolini’s Striggio brings together a programme including the Striggio Mass in 40 parts and the motet Ecce beatam lucem along with the new version of Tallis Spem in Alium with instruments. The concert also showcases performances of Giovanni Gabrieli’s mighty Magnificat.
Conducted by Robert Hollingworth, who also writes and presents programmes for BBC Radio 3, the concert will also join together The English Cornett and Sackbull Orchestra, Rose Consort of Viols and the University of York Chamber Choir among others, uniting amateur music lovers with the cream of the music crop.
I Fagiolini is a British solo-voice ensemble specialising in Renaissance and contemporary music founded at Oxford University in 1986. It is the only early music ensemble ever to be awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Ensemble Prize.
The Striggio performance has already visited Bath Abbey and King’s College Cambridge and is to head to Tewkesbury Abbey shortly before it arrives on York’s doorstep. The late-night illuminated performance forms part of the York Early Music Festival which celebrates some of the world’s finest early music specialists from Europe and South America in venues across York.
For further details of the festival or information on how to book on to an evening fusing together light, sight, music and sound in I Fagiolini’s Late Night Striggio, click here.
