Medieval Music Concert

Fount & Origin is a vocal ensemble specialising in late medieval music. In this concert, the ensemble will revive music performed in England during the lifetime of Alice Chaucer (c.1404–75) and beyond. The singers will perform sacred and secular music that Alice may have heard when visiting the aristocratic courts, royal chapels, and great cathedrals of late medieval England. They will also demonstrate forms of music which were probably performed in more modest institutions, including Alice's foundation at Ewelme.

Fount & Origin will provide an introduction to fifteenth-century music at the beginning of the concert and a separate introduction to each item in the programme, explaining the importance of foundations and benefactions for the cultivation of music in late medieval England. To illustrate a wide range of music which Alice might have heard, the programme will include:

Ave maria, Mater Dei – William Cornysh (d.c.1502/23)

Gloria – John Cooke (c.1385–?1442)

O potores exquisiti – Anonymous

Adieu mes amours – William Cornysh (d.c.1502/23)

Sumwhat musyng – Robert Fayrfax (1464–1521)

Ave maris stella – Anonymous

Benedicamus Domino – Sir William Hawte (c.1430–97)

O rosa bella – John Bedyngham (d.c.1459)

Fount & Origin is an early music ensemble specialising in vocal music of the late Middle Ages. The ensemble was founded in 2018 in Oxford by James Tomlinson and Andrew Doll. Not long after its inception, Fount & Origin was awarded the inaugural Stile Antico Ensemble Development Bursary for the period 2019–22. In October 2022 they released their debut album, The Sword and the Lily: 15th-century polyphony for Judgement Day, with Resonus Classics. The disc won critical acclaim, receiving five stars in BBC Music Magazine, and Fount & Origin were selected as a Gramophone Magazine 'One-To-Watch Artist'. The ensemble now perform internationally, and their members are resident in four European countries.

The ensemble:

Lewis Hammond & Joy Sutcliffe, alto

Andrew Doll, Joseph Mason, & Matthew Pope, tenor

Theodore Nisbett, baritone

Max Cheung & Grantley McDonald, bass

James Tomlinson, director

Joseph Mason (tenor). Organ Scholar at Lincoln College, Oxford with postgraduate degrees at King’s College, London and Oxford. Teacher in early music at Cambridge, researcher in the music of thirteenth-century France.
Joy Sutcliffe (mezzo). Chorister at Ripon, before reading Music at Durham. Lay Clerk at Magdalen College, Oxford and then at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Oratorio soloist and choral singer with Tenebrae, The Queen’s Six, The Marian Consort and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
Lewis Hammond (countertenor). Alto choral scholar at Chelmsford Cathedral before reading music at New College, Oxford, where he created a baroque group the Wykeham Consort. In France since 2020 where he conducts vocal ensembles, and is musical director of the Paris Choral Society.
James Tomlinson (bass). Founder and artistic director. Read Music and Medieval Studies at Oxford, as Senior Choral Scholar at Queen’s. Currently researching late medieval music and culture in Europe at the University of Oslo, while working internationally as choral singer and soloist.
Matthew Pope (tenor). Composer, music producer, and pianist who currently sings as a Lay Clerk at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. Opera soloist and choral singer with Kantos, the New London Chamber Choir, and jazz groups The Oxford Gargoyles, and Little Kitchen.
Theodore Nisbett (baritone). Academical Clerk at New College, Oxford, currently pursuing an MA in Vocal Studies at the Royal Academy of Music, regular performer as a soloist in oratorio and on the recital stage. Avid painter and writer.
Grantley McDonald (bass). Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna, focussing on Renaissance culture and the links between musical thought, theology, philosophy and medicine. Singer with Cappella Pratensis, Brabant Ensemble, Diabolus in Musica, Chœur de Chambre de Namur, and Trinity Baroque.
Max Cheung (bass). Read Classics at Oxford, singing in the choirs of Merton, Queen’s and New College. Trainee solicitor with Slaughter & May while singing with the choir at All Hallows Gospel Oak, and I Dodici, and also being a cellist and pianist.