àCapela opening hours: 5pm to 11pm
This venue is not wheelchair accessible and for people with reduced mobility.
Playing with Playford – 17th-century English dances from the English Dancing Master
This concert pays tribute to a precious musical source first published in 1651: the English Dancing Master.
This publication, produced by the publisher John Playford and his heirs, ran to some 18 editions between 1651 and 1728. It is a kind of ‘Borda d’Água’ dedicated to group dances, the so-called ‘Country Dances’, which were a hallmark of English culture in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Within its small pages (the book was designed to fit in a dance master’s pocket) we find over a hundred ‘tunes’ with their respective choreographic instructions.
These beautiful melodies represent a fascinating repertoire that links traditional music to the classical music of composers such as William Byrd, John Dowland and Orlando Gibbons, and continues to inspire both musicians and dancers. In the interpretation by Os Músicos do Tejo, they serve as a pretext for improvisation and spontaneity, in a concert that breaks away from the conventions of classical music.