Fortune's Wheels

Consort of 1 is Lizzie Gutteridge's live-looping Early Music project where she performs historical music on historical instruments including recorder, bagpipes, aulos, percussion, sordune, and pipe & tabor.

By combining these sounds of the past with some 21st-century technology, new light is thrown onto ancient music, peeling back, then building up the layers of anything from Medieval dances to lyrical chansons. Historical melodies are given the lightest of modern make-overs with the aid of the 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, but not all, of these new 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?'

Fortune's Wheels is a new adventure for 2026 where Lizzie, carrying a selection of her smaller instruments and a minimalist set-up of loop pedal, amplifier, etc., will be ditching the comfort of the car and travelling to performances on her bamboo bicycle (taking it on the train where necessary). This performance is one of several test runs before she sets off in July for a whole week to cycle up to Norwich, performing at venues throughout Suffolk on her way north.

Lizzie Gutteridge took up playing the shawm as a part of the historical re-enactment movement to re-form Waits bands throughout the country, then decided to pursue it further and make it her main occupation. She plays a wide range of historical instruments, including bagpipes, recorders, curtals and fiddles.

Lizzie now performs up and down the country, in and out of historical costume, including as a member of Blondel and The York Waits. Freelance engagements have included the Globe's 'Nell Gwynn', both on tour and in the West End; 'The Knight of the Burning Pestle' at the Wanamaker Theatre; performances in Morocco and London with Passamezzo; large-scale events at Hampton Court and the Tower of London; as well as TV appearances on 'Thronecast – Gameshow of Thrones' and 'A Merry Tudor Christmas with Lucy Worsley' and live & recorded performances on bagpipes of Gregory Rose’s 'Dance Macabre'.

When she’s not performing, Lizzie also makes reeds for Renaissance instruments, including shawms, curtals and crumhorns, and teaches both in schools and around the country, where her workshops and taster sessions are in increasing demand. Back home in Essex, she runs The Colchester Waits, an ever-expanding amateur shawm band for all comers which currently consists of about 16 enthusiastic players of Renaissance wind music with musical backgrounds ranging from pop and folk to classical... or none at all!