Consort of 1

Lizzie Gutteridge, as Consort of 1, performs melodies from the 12th to 17th centuries on historical instruments, including fiddles, bagpipes, shawms, percussion, recorders, pipe & tabor, curtal, aulos and chalumeau. By combining sounds of the past with some 21st-century technology, new light is thrown onto ancient music, peeling back and then building up the layers of anything from mediaeval dances to Playford divisions.

Music from historical manuscripts, ranging from 13th-century dance tunes through 15th-century chansons and 16th-century consorts to Divisions on a ground from the 17th century, is given the lightest of modern makeovers with the aid of live looping equipment. Much of this material lends itself well to the layers and cycles that can be produced using the loop station, and most of the arrangements are based on the premise of "what might a person from the period when this tune was written have done with this technology had they had the chance?" There are a few ground rules: no special effects, nothing louder than the natural acoustic sounds produced by the historical instruments, and every note of every show will be played live on the day – nothing pre-recorded.