Programme:

Thomas Campion: The peaceful Western wind.
John Wilson: Come thou Father of the Spring
John Gamble: The Spring
The pleasant Spring
This merry pleasant Spring
The nightingale
Henry Youll: Of sweet and dainty flowers
John Wilson: Love’s emblems
The merry pastime of the Spring
Thomas Morley: It was a lover and his lass

John Wilson: We sing, we feast.
Michael East: In the merry month of May
John Dowland: By a fountain
May Galliard
A pleasant country maying song
The dairymaid’s mirth and pastime on May Day
When May is in his prime.
The Maypole dance at Gray’s Inn
Joan to the maypole
A pastoral song upon a ground
Thomas Weelkes: Since Robin Hood/The Morris
Martin Peerson: Now Robin laugh and sing
Playford: Whitsun Holidays

Eleanor Cramer (Soprano, Viols)
Richard De Winter (Actor, Baritone)
Robin Jeffrey (Lute, Theorbo, Guitar)
Alison Kinder (Viols, Recorders)
Tamsin Lewis (Renaissance Violin, Viols, Alto)

Passamezzo specialises in Elizabethan and Jacobean repertoire by well known, and lesser known, composers of the period and spoken word. They perform, in costume and on period instruments, carefully researched programmes of pieces that have often lain hidden for centuries.

“This Merry Pleasant Spring’ includes music by Bannister, Campion, Dowland, East, Morley, Peerson, Weelkes and Wilson, and readings from Spenser, Stubbes, Herrick and Breton and consists of ballads, lute songs, consort music, madrigals, dance melodies and readings. It follows the season from the melting of the ice at the beginning of spring, through maying, maypoles, hobby horses and feasting, to the sheep shearing and Whitsun holidays that mark the coming of summer.