Buckingham Summer Music Festival, 3rd July 2012, 7.30pm
Programme: Old England Grown New, A 17th century Songbook
A rare opportunity to hear exquisite formal music from the court of Charles I, together with irreverent broadside ballads popular in Charles I's reign and the Restoration, some sung by Nell Gwynn, plus some seriously hot fiddle playing.
This programme was originally commissioned by Sir John Soane's Museum at Banqueting House in 2010

Buxton Festival, Cathedral of the Peak, Tideswell, Derbyshire, 14th July 2012, 2.30pm
Programme: Calliope, A Georgian Songbook
In London in the 1740s, a time when society prized illusion and intrigue above all, subverting the accepted sexual system was fair game. Men with high voices ruled the stage, and cross-dressing abounded for comic affect or for survival. Londoner’s have not changed so much in three-hundred years. Songs are still about the same things: Girls that are just after money; others searching for real love; a guy who wants to get a date; and even the best friend that wants to take him out to drown his sorrows. Poetry and fantasy combine with the luminous colours of original baroque instruments to create an opulent adventure in 18th-century entertainment.