The Brook Street Band & Roots Baroque Ensemble
The eighteenth-century painter Philippe Mercier is justly celebrated for his beautiful portraits of English society, including Royalty. He often painted social gatherings of families and friends in more intimate and domestic settings, including playing musical instruments. The Brook Street Band takes Mercier’s The Sense of Hearing, his 1740s portrait of four female musicians, as the starting point for a musical exploration of the sound-worlds that these musicians would have known in England, through popular adopted ‘English’ composers of the day including Handel, and Handel’s European colleagues Bach and Telemann.
The brilliant Cambridgeshire-based Roots Baroque Ensemble (made up of aspiring young musicians who have been working with The Brook Street Band this year) sets the scene to the evening’s entertainment, with two short works by Purcell and Handel.
This concert is part of the Roots Education Project.