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Some of 2024 has been delightfully spent playing and recording three-part fantasias by Byrd, Holborne, Bevin and Josquin on recorder and chamber organ, with organist Paul Jenkins. They’ll be out soon, but in the meantime here’s a small sample of what we’ve been up to. Fantasia 1 for three parts, by William Byrd:

https://alisonmelville.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Byrd-Fantasia-I.mp3

July 2024: Thanks to Sabrina Cruz and everyone at Answer in Progress for inviting me to be a part of this YouTube production. What a great mix of goals – curiosity, learning, questioning assumptions, putting music back into your life, and seeing what pleasure it brings. Far from being another ‘let’s trash the recorder’ piece, this is a definite ‘thumbs-up’ for the instrument and playing it, whatever your level and goals may be. Congrats and thanks to Answer in Progress for such a creative, well researched and beautifully put together video!

Peter Hannan’s HARMONIA:

Summer 2023: Peter Hannan’s Harmonia, recorded with Stephanie Chua (keyboard synths) in early October 2023. Peter wrote the piece in 1990 for midi wind and revised it in 2022 for the Artinoise Re.corder. It was a huge pleasure – and a huge learning curve! – to learn, rehearse and record this piece and I’m so grateful to Peter for asking me.

Here’s the piece, on Peter Hannan’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfAYGBH5Xf4

Thanks to Colin Savage for the session photo of sound engineer Matt Antal, videographer Jeremy Mimnagh, composer/producer Peter Hannan, Stephanie Chua and yours truly.