Mediaeval Baebes end tour at Walton Center

Don't call the Mediaeval Baebes a consort.

Yes, says Katharine Blake, the group's founder, principal musical arranger and most frequent lead vocalist, the British Isles-based septet does perform early (or even earlier) music with voices and instruments.

But, "I kind of think of ourselves as a band, actually, even though we are a choir," she says by telephone from London. "The atmosphere is more like a band. The idea is to make it more fun and informal and playful rather than being a serious classical outlet."

The ensemble wraps up a six-city southern U.S. tour in conjunction with the American release of their 2013 Christmas album, Of Kings & Angels, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Fayetteville's Walton Arts Center.

"We're doing quite a lot of songs from the Christmas album, but also some more traditional medieval Christmas material, arranged, special Mediaeval Baebes-style, plus some of my own compositions," Blake says.

The Mediaeval Baebes' lineup: Blake, Emily Alice Ovenden, Clare Marika Edmondson, Josephine Ravenheart, Melpomeni, Sophie Ramsay and Anna Tam. Blake, Edmondson, Ovenden and Ravenheart are among the six Baebes who recorded the vocals and played supporting instruments on the Christmas album.

Blake says the lineup is fluid. "We started out with 12, actually, and streamlined the number over the years," she says.

"We share the leads; some songs are just ensemble pieces; a lot of songs, someone will take the lead and everyone else will join the chorus or sing backup harmonies. There's an Arabic song I sing where it's just me on my own with the musicians; the viola da gamba player does a solo at one point."

The band plays a wide range of ancient and modern instruments: viola da gamba, viola d'amore, crumhorns, zither, psaltery (early cousin of the zither), harp, Gothic lap harp, French horn, medieval fiddle, Baroque fiddle, percussion, acoustic guitar, autoharp, cittern, double bass, oud and hurdy-gurdy.

The ensemble includes some pure instrumentalists, Blake says, though most of the women also play music. "I play the violin and recorder; Clare plays the lyre; Josephine Ravenheart plays the hurdy-gurdy. So we're constantly swapping around and doing things on stage to keep things as lively as possible."

The singers will wear white robes for the first half of the program, which Blake says is "more of a traditional, English, winter wonderland half." It centers on carols from the 13th to the 19th centuries -- for example, "I Saw Three Ships," "The Holly and the Ivy" and "Ther Is No Rose Of Swych Vertu," Blake's a cappella setting of a medieval text in praise of the Virgin Mary.

The second, she says is more "theatrical." "We're going for more of a desert vibe," she says, including the Arabic song she mentioned, and "we take some well-known Christmas carols -- 'Once in Royal David's City,' 'God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen' -- and give them more of an Arab-esque treatment, which I think is kind of appropriate, considering where Christ was born." (Bethlehem is now part of the Palestinian territory.)

The group also varies from the consort model because the music-making isn't focused on authentic period musical forms or performance practices, Blake says.

"If anyone wants to criticize us for not being authentic, then they're barking up the wrong tree, because that's not the aim."

The live show, she says, is "a hell of a journey. There's a very strong fantastical element to [it]; we're not in the business of being doggedly authentic. We take romantic themes and elements of the medieval period and use that as part of our sound and image. It's more about having fun with it, more of fairy tale idea of the period rather than historically accurate at all times."

In the early 1990s, Blake was one-third of Miranda Sex Garden, a trio of madrigal singers that gradually added members on percussion, guitars and organs and a touch of gothic rock to its sound.

In 1996, she and a group of friends broke into a North London cemetery, clad in flowing white gowns and crowns of ivy, to sing among the tombstones, and the Mediaeval Baebes was born. Their repertoire includes traditional medieval song settings, most of them arranged in some way, by Blake, in Latin, Middle English, medieval French, Italian, German, Cornish and medieval Welsh.

Their discography includes 11 albums; they contributed to the award-winning soundtrack of the BBC's The Virgin Queen.

A new North America record distribution deal has brought Of Kings and Angels and two other albums, Illumination and Temptation, to the U.S. and its digital download services. A fourth, 2012's The Huntress, comes out next year.

By the time they close things out Thursday in Fayetteville, their tour will have taken them to four venues in Florida. Tuesday, they'll be at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.

"It's kind of our first American Christmas tour," Blake says, "so we're hoping it's going to go really well, so we can come back and do a lot more dates next year. Normally at this time of year we do a U.K. cathedral tour. Our fans are going to have to do without that this year."

Style on 12/07/2014