Anne Marieke Evers - mezzo soprano
Anita Orme Della Marta - recorders, harp
Tobie Miller - hurdy gurdy, recorders
Elizabeth Rumsey - viola d'arco, recorders
Ensemble for Late Medieval and Contemporary Music
Winners of the audience prize at the 2009 York Early Music Festival International Young Artists’ Competition
The mezzo-soprano Anne Marieke Evers and the recorder player Anita Orme Della Marta met at the beginning of their musical studies at the Conservatorium of Amsterdam in September 1997. They formed a duo shortly after, specializing in contemporary music as well as medieval and renaissance music. Later in their careers, their paths led them to pursue further studies in medieval music at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Switzerland, where they met the other ensemble members of Grand Désir. It was here that a common interest in late-medieval music brought the group together in December 2004. Alongside a few fixed members, Grand Désir likes to work with different musicians for each individual programme, thus creating the flexibility to obtain the perfect instrumentation for each project. Grand Désir made its debut in the ‘Fringe’ programme of the Utrecht Early Music Festival 2005. The ensemble has given numerous performances since in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Australia.
“The jury’s long deliberation following the final in this year’s York Early Music Festival International Young Artists’ Competition was indicative of the problem they must have experienced in separating out the winner…Not for the first time the Audience Prize was at odds with the jury – as in 2005 when the audience selected the now international famous Stile Antico. They may well be proved right again in giving the award to…Grand Désir, a female trio with that rare and indefinable quality that set them apart from the other finalists. They performed three anonymous works from around 1500, the perfectly focused mezzo voice of Anne Marieke Evers hauntingly beautiful in their opening works from the Songbook of Anna of Cologne. Her accompaniment came from two superb musicians who employed a freedom of expression no other group felt able to risk.”
David Denton, Early Music Today, Aug/Sep 2009
www.granddesir.com
Programmes
Her Lady's Devotion
Dance et Chanson
Medieval England
Contemporary music for medieval ensemble |
