The Leaves Be Green
Gwendolen Martin studied music at Worcester College, Oxford, where she was a choral scholar. She went on to study singing at Trinity College of Music and now enjoys a career as a soloist and ensemble singer. She has performed and recorded with The Monteverdi Choir, BBC Singers, The Tallis Scholars, The Gabrieli Consort, Eric Whitacre Singers, Ensemble Plus Ultra, Oxford Bach Soloists and The Marian Consort. Gwendolen is passionate about music education and manages the Curriculum Partnership Programme for Southwark Music, training specialist music teachers in 30 primary schools.
Jonathan Hanley is a British tenor working as both a soloist and ensemble singer with a particular interest in Baroque vocal music. A history graduate from the University of York, Jonathan currently studies with Richard Edgar-Wilson. He has appeared as a soloist with the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, Salzburg Camerata, Southbank Sinfonia, Yorkshire Baroque Soloists and the Instruments of Time and Truth. Jonathan also enjoys performing English song and lieder, most recently performing ‘Dead Letters’ by Raymond Yiu, and Schumann Liederkreis (Op. 39) interspersed with Britten accompanied by Gavin Roberts.
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Renaissance and traditional folk music celebrating the turn of the seasons - crown the May Queen, dance around the maypole, pick apples in Linden Lea, shelter from cold winter’s ice - eat, drink and be merry! In the Renaissance, composers took popular tunes and wrote sophisticated arrangements of them - William Byrd’s Sellengers Round in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, any number of settings of Browning or The Leaves be Green for viol consort. This programme takes that precedent and uses old settings of old tunes, new settings of old tunes, madrigals, and more recent folk songs, to tell the story of a whole year. The programme includes the madrigals All Creatures Now Are Merry Minded by John Bennet and Cold Winters’ Ice Is Dead And Gone by Thomas Weelkes, settings of The Leaves Be Greene, the folk songs Scarborough Fair and Linden Lea, and consort music by Anthony Holborne and John Ward. We are joined by singers Gwendolen Martin (soprano) and Jonathan Hanley (tenor). |
