For this informal concert in the intimate space of Newbury Methodist Church we welcome two young singers specializing in the fascinating art of Elizabethan song. In particular, they feature the unjustly neglected works of Robert Jones while the Newbury Chamber Choir will perform madrigals by George Kirbye: a rare chance to hear any of this lovely music.

The concert is accomapnied by the world-famous lutenist Lynda Sayce who lives north of Newbury. One of Britain’s leading lutenists with over 100 recordings to her name, Lynda Sayce read Music at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, then studied lute with Jakob Lindberg at the Royal College of Music. She performs regularly with leading period instrument ensembles worldwide, and has broadcast extensively on radio and TV. She is principal lutenist with The King's Consort, the Musicians of the Globe, the New London Consort and Ex Cathedra. She is also director of the lute ensemble Chordophony, whose repertory and instrumentarium is based exclusively on her research. Lynda has written for Early Music, the New Grove Dictionary of Music, and the art journal Apollo, and contributed plucked instrument texts to the new musical instrument catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. She holds a Ph.D for her research on the history of the theorbo, which is shortly to be published in the USA.

Katrina Damigos has been studying music since the age of eight. She attended the Purcell School before studying violin at the Royal Northern College of Music and reading music at Royal Holloway University of London. She spent her formative years singing as both a soloist and in choirs at all the major performance venues in London, with Finchley Childrens Music Group and the ENO childrens chorus. She has also performed in film and the theatre and was a prize winner in English National Association for Singers and Speakers competition in 2005. She has been developing an interest in early vocal music performing in operas by Purcell and Cavalieri and English Renaissance lute songs.  She is also interested in music and song from around the world and spent last year working on mixed vocal genres as part of the Voicelab project, “Pulse” at the Southbank centre, London. She graduated fro Royal Holloway, University of London with a first in music last summer and is currently studying for her masters in Ethnomusicology at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Jake Daichi Gill graduated from Royal Holloway, University of London with a First in Music, receiving the Martin Holloway prize from the Arts faculty and the Alice Dougherty Chaplin prize for his final year recital; an 'Alternative Dichterliebe', comprising settings by various composers of the Heine poems of Schumann's lieder cycle, including contemporary settings newly composed by Lawrence Dunn and Joshua Navon. He has returned to Royal Holloway to perform Schubert's Winterreise with Erik Levi. In opera, he has sung the role of Figaro in Opera Holloway's Marriage of Figaro, Masetto in Somerset Opera’s Don Giovanni and Baron Douphol in Park Opera's La Traviata. In April will perform in Hampstead Garden Opera's Cosi Fan Tutte, singing Guglielmo. Concert performances have included Bach Magnificat and Finzi In Terra Pax with Andover Choral Society. He currently studies with Graham Titus.

Clearly, a concert with a difference and not to be missed!