Alabasters Project event: A Coronation for the Virgin: Nottingham Alabasters and English Sacred Music
Binchois Consort, dir. Andrew Kirkman
Devised and presented by the University of Birmingham, the University of Nottingham, and Lakeside Arts
Free pre-concert talk (with projections) at 6pm
Concert (also with projections) at 7.30pm
The Alabasters Project
This project brings Latin-texted sacred music and contemporary religious images, produced in England during the long 15th century, into a new synergy. It is part of a larger project to restore late medieval and Renaissance polyphony to its wider context, visually, spatially and acoustically. The aim is to combine historical insight and sensitive interpretation with a new and illuminating concert experience for the present day, for all types of audience.
English late-medieval traditions of alabaster carving and polyphonic singing were widely diffused and absolutely distinctive. Important examples of the work of the alabastermen have been located in regions throughout Europe, and this international fame and influence represented a quite exceptional situation for England and English art, one scarcely replicated in later centuries. Tonight’s concert offers, we hope, a beautiful snapshot view of a project whose larger purpose is to frame a new experiential understanding of both the music and the sculpture, by bringing them into a closer communion.
We have set out to achieve this aim through the simultaneous – integrated, and mutually reinforcing – pursuit of research and performance. The hoped-for result will be a vivid and involving experience for 21st-century audiences.
Andrew Kirkman and Philip Weller
The Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham