Bird on a Briar: Traditional and Ancient Songs
In the 1950s and 1960s and into the 1970s, musicians were simultaneously rediscovering the nearly lost worlds of traditional folk music and the music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
In the folk world, singers like Ewan McColl, Pete Seeger and Jeannie Robertson (born into the culture of the traveling folk and bardic traditions of Scotland) and others were reviving and bringing to the public’s attention music that had traveled down the centuries through oral traditions. In the early music world, musicians like David Munrow, Michael Morrow, Alfred Deller, and many others, introduced the public to long-ignored written music and fascinating archaic instruments, pursuing the goal of how the music would have sounded when it was first written.
These two movements, particularly in the UK, were very closely allied because of their mutual goals, and there was much cross-over and collaboration between them. There was a palpable excitement and an urgency around capturing true “folk” music before it disappeared and unearthing neglected manuscripts and recreating ancient and unusual instruments.
In time, the traditional folk movement spawned the popular folk genre, which ultimately turned away from the traditional music and became one of singer/songwriters and protest songs. The early music movement ultimately took on a more academic tone and morphed into the “historically informed performance” movement, with the primary focus moving away from the Middle Ages and Renaissance toward Baroque and later repertoire. Both movements, in their evolved forms, are still very much alive and thriving.
This concert looks back to recapture the excitement of that first period of discovery. It is, in a sense, a revival revival.
Gwen Jamieson is a singer and multi-instrumentalist. With a degree in classical voice, she has long had a keen interest in early music and traditional folk music. She performs regularly with Banquo Folk Ensemble, which presents traditional and early music with a folk music approach, and the medieval ensemble Bourdons, recently featured in EMSI’s Signature Series this past season. She has been a guest soloist for a number of local choirs and orchestras, including Bach on the Rock, Via Choralis and Ensemble Laude, has performed a number of times at the Victoria Folk Music Society, and regularly sings lead soprano with two church choirs. She has appeared a number of times in EMSI concerts, including the full-length, Covid-era video concert “Airs de Cours”. Gwen has been invited back by the Toronto Consort for the second year in a row to perform in concert alongside Dame Emma Kirkby.
Our first summer concert of 2026, in the beautiful setting of an Arts and Crafts home with a spectacular garden, features Gwen as a singer of both folk and early music, accompanying herself on guitar, harp, Anglo-Saxon lyre and hurdy gurdy.
Programme:
The Cuckoo
Trad English
Bryd one Breere
anon English 14th C.
Tam Lin
Trad English
J’aloie l’autrier errant
Thibaut de Champagne 13th C. French
The Sweet Apple
Text: Sappho, Trans. Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Music: Gwen Jamieson
Trees they Grow High
Trad English
Katie Cruel
Trad U.S.
Lagan Love
Trad. Irish
Falcon Carol
Text: Anon English 16th C. Music: Trad Scottish
I won’t do the work
Trad. Nova Scotia
Blackwaterside
Trad. English
Thornymoor Woods
Trad. English
O’Carolan’s Welcome
Turloch O’Carolan 17th C.
Irish Volez vous que je vous chant
Anon. 13t C. French
Because the venue is a private residence, the location will be provided upon confirmation of purchase.
The concert will be video recorded.
Above image from The Pictorial Book of Ancient Ballad Poetry of Great Britain, Historical, Traditional, and Romantic
Joseph S. Moore, 1853
