Consort of 1 is Lizzie Gutteridge’s live-looping Early Music project where she performs historical on historical instruments including fiddles, bagpipes, shawms, percussion, recorders, and pipe & tabor. By combining these sounds of the past with some 21st century technology new light is thrown onto ancient music, peeling back, then building up the layers of anything from Medieval dances to lyrical chansons. Historical melodies are given the lightest of modern make-overs with the aid of live looping equipment. Much of this material lends itself well to the layers and cycles that can be produced using the loop station, and most, but not all, of these new arrangements are based on the premise of “what might a person from the period when this tune was written have done with this technology, had they had the chance?”

The concert programme and album Looping Through Time explores historically informed interpretations of pieces from historical manuscripts, ranging from 13thc dance tunes through 15thc chansons and 16thc consorts to Divisions on a ground from the 17thc. Ever since starting out with this project nearly 10 years ago I have set myself a few ground rules: no special effects which alter the sounds of the instrument, nothing louder than the natural acoustic sounds produced by the historical instruments, and every note of every show is played live on the day with nothing pre-recorded.