From the Library: The Early Music Show with Elrik Merlin

Today on the Early Music Show, we'll be featuring the work of Philip Pickett, an expert in and player of mediæval and Renaissance instruments, and director of both the New London Consort and the Musicians of the Globe Theatre in London. He has played for the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, The English Concert, the English Chamber Orchestra, the London Mozart Players and many other orchestras. You can read more about him here.

Phil Pickett was appointed artistic director of the Purcell Room Early Music series in 1993, and in the same year was appointed director of Early Music at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. He also leads the New London Consort.

Pickett has, however, done a lot more than remain in the hallowed halls of traditional Early Music and its instrumentation. He joined the Albion Band, founded by Ashley Hutchings, in 1976, where he added Renaissance instrumentation and musical elements to their folk music work on The Prospect Before Us and Rise Up Like The Sun, and released a solo album, The Alchemist, in 1988. More recently (1998) he recorded a marvellous album of rocked-up Renaissance pieces with Richard Thompson and various members of Fairport Convention called The Bones Of All Men.

We'll be hearing work from all of these threads of Pickett's work today: sit back and enjoy the varied and exciting music of this unique virtuoso artist and musical director.

Today's programme is presented by Elrik Merlin and produced by gullar sahir in conjunction with our friends at the Alexandrian Free Library Consortium of Second Life. You can listen to the programme in-world now at http://main.radioriel.org, or simply click here to start your player, if your browser is configured to do so. Listeners in the United States are encouraged to tune in using this link: http://loudcity.com/stations/radio-riel/tune_in

For more information on the Alexandrian Free Library, current exhibits and the work of Consortium members in general, please visit the Alexandrian Free Library website, or one of their branches in-world.