SINFONYE
The group's founding director, Stevie Wishart, conceived of Sinfonye as a group combining improvisatory skills derived from traditional music with performance practices recreated from historical research, particularly repertories sung, inspired or composed by women. In 1987, Sinfonye was awarded the highest prize in the Festival van Vlaanderen in Brugge and made their first recording, Bella Domna. Following an acclaimed London debut in 1988, Sinfonye performed at the Wigmore Hall for the International Prizewinners series, and made their debut tour for the Early Music Network. Since then Stevie Wishart and Sinfonye have been at the forefront of the promotion and presentation of medieval music with much of their work, from Bella Domna to Hildegard von Bingen, being regarded as seminal in its influence of a new generation of performers. Sinfonye performs at the major European music festivals and made their American debut in 1990. Other projects included working with traditional musicians in Portugal, Cantabria and southern France whose culture relates back to medieval performance practices, and taking part in a television documentary on improvised music. The group gave the British premiere of the Cantigas de Amor of Dom Dinis, performed the Cantigas de Santa Maria, and also presented multi-media performances of the works of Hildegard of Bingen in venues such as the Queen Elizabeth Hall. With Sinfonye, Stevie Wishart is directing an on-going project to record the complete works of Hildegard of Bingen. Sinfonye performed at the Southbank’s ‘Take the Risk’ Festival in Stevie’s composition Transients for voices and medieval and modern instruments which has since been recorded for CD.
April 2011