Cover Story

Medieval and Early Renaissance hits performed on shawms, sackbut, recorders & bagpipes.

What makes a song leap across national boundaries and language barriers, slip from the secular to the ecclesiastic, and remain at the top of the charts for more than 70 years? We don’t have the formula, but we know why these pieces wedged themselves into the cultural background of medieval Europe. The music is fabulous.

Cover Story tracks connections between people, places, texts and music. It follows the evolution of popular late medieval melodies across Europe as they are copied, rearranged and repurposed over years, and even decades.

Catchy dances and lyrical chansons, ingenious rounds and dazzling divisions by Machaut, Dufay, Bedyngham, Binchois, and many unnamed masters.

Inspired by the virtuosic wind players of the Middle Ages, Blondel bring their signature rousing blend of shawms and bagpipes, and introspective mix of recorders to Birmingham for the first time since 2020.