Stairway to early music heaven
We tend to think of the worlds of classical and rock music as being divergent but, as John Potter explains, there is a lively intersection of activity in those seemingly disparate spheres of musical activity that might surprise you.
A taste of that cross-cultural activity will be heard when the tenor brings his Alternative History project to the Triskel Arts Centre as part of the venue’s 40th birthday celebrations on Culture Night.
The programme will include work by Renaissance heavyweights Victoria and Josquin Desprez, alongside contemporary pieces by John Paul Jones and Peter Erskine, better known as key members of the rock and jazz fusion groups, Led Zeppelin and Weather Report.
Scratch the surface of many a hardcore rock guitarist and you may find a Renaissance man pining for his lute lurking within. Sting is an accomplished lutenist and Elvis Costello has written for early music ensemble Fretwork.
Potter’s association with Led Zeppelins’s bass guitarist, Jones goes back to the 80’s.
“I knew John had been a church organist as a teenager. A friend had heard an organ piece he’d written. I wrote to him on spec hoping my letter would reach him. Jones wrote 33 pieces for my 1980s group Red Byrd, versions of which we did last time we came to Cork. For this project he has written a setting of William Blake’s Cradle Song for two lutes and two voices.”
For Potter these 21st century songwriters have a strong affinity with their 16th and 17th century counterparts. “The concept of a composer is very much an 18th century thing.
Before that there wasn’t a distinction between pop and classical music. It was all just music although some of it was more sophisticated.”
Although highly respected in the world of early music, Potter has valid rock credentials in his own right having sung backing vocals with major bands during the heyday of rock opera era.
Potter explains the reason behind the labelling of this concert as the Alternative History Project. “If you are a fan of Renaissance polyphony you will likely have recordings of acapella choral groups because that is how the music was first performed because the church was the main employer of musicians.
After that first performance, the music was taken away and copied and anyone could have a go.
“Most people would hear these pieces outside the church rearranged for whoever happened to be around to play it. The music would have gone on being performed for a century or more after it was first performed in church.
"Our performances arranged for two lutes and two singers are probably closer to how most people first experienced Renaisssance polyphony. The history of the performance of the music is quite different to the history of the writing of it.”
Potter is joined by lute players Ariel Abramovich and Jacob Heringman and soprano Anna Maria Friman from the Swedish group Trio Mediaeval.
Potter has a long history of ecelctic collaborations that have pushed vocal performance into new ground. The Hilliard Ensemble’s much feted collaboration with Norwegian saxophonist John Garbarek drew in jazz and early music fans.
“The image that does it for me is the overlapping cirles of a Venn diagram. Where those circles overlap, that’s where our audience is. We miss out on the mainstream but we have a devoted audience of people on the periphery. Luckily there are people all over the world who want to hear us.”
Potter is looking forward to coming back to Cork for two autumn dates. The anticipation is all the keener as the original date was scuppered by the snow.
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