ABOUT US

Ensemble Parlamento specialises in the music of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, using historical sources to inform their performance on lutes, flutes, vielles, harps, percussion, and voice.

Since its founding in 2021, Basel-based Ensemble Parlamento has been invited to participate in music festivals such as Freunde Alter Musik Basel (Switzerland, 2024), Sastamala Gregoriana (Finland, 2023), Medimus (Kosovo, 2023), Basel ReRenaissance Festival (Switzerland, 2023), and the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik (Austria, 2022). Parlamento was also awarded the 2022 Schola Cantorum Basiliensis "Vier Jahreszeiten" fall prize, and they have performed other concerts internationally. The ensemble has also sought ways to bring the beauty of early music to their local culture by visiting elementary schools and senior centers in their region.

The members of Ensemble Parlamento met in 2020 while studying at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and bonded as they spent Friday evenings studying the fourteenth-century notation and love poetry of Guillaume de Machaut for fun. Their first concert programme was the fruit of these explorations, and this time of relaxed creativity allowed their sound to develop a unique character. Since then, Parlamento has developed additional concert programmes based on The Nibelungenlied and the Court of Ferrara.

Karin Weston – voice
Elizabeth Sommers – fiddle
Holly Scarborough – flutes, co-direction
Ailen Monti – lute and gittern, co-direction