"Were Botticelli's Primavera to burst into song, she would probably sound like this." - Independent on Sunday
For twenty years, Musica Secreta - co-directors Deborah Roberts and Laurie Stras - has been at the forefront of the discovery and interpretation of music for and by early modern women. We bring together internationally-acclaimed musicians and ground-breaking research to perform this fascinating and continually emerging repertoire.
Our programmes illustrate the many faces of women musicians in the 16th and 17th centuries: courtiers, courtesans, actresses and cloistered nuns. There is always an element of story-telling, theatre, and surprise, in our performances, for the women who first made our music had lives as compelling as the music itself.
The Sirens have been working hard preparing their new programme The Secret Life of Nuns. Details of the first performance at the Brighton Festival Fringe on 16 May are in our concert diary.
And getting ready for the festival season, the Sirens go casual with a new t-shirt and a trance track. Buy the t-shirt in the web shop and get a free download of summer loveliness.
"a sense of scholarship as well as intense musicality runs through the whole: fascinating and lovely." - Gramophone, Editor's Choice, November 2009
Sacred Hearts, Secret Music is our latest award-winning CD, the result of a collaboration with novelist Sarah Dunant. See the London Literature Festival blog for a report of the 2009 book launch with Musica Secreta and Celestial Sirens fully nunned up.
Throughout 2010 and 2011, a concert-length version of the show will be touring around the British Isles. See our concert diary for details of upcoming performances.