History
The band was originally formed as troubadours for a live action role-playing game, but quickly expanded beyond that niche. The young band played their first concert as a support band for Saltatio Mortis (then already a well-known up-and-coming act) in Cologne in early 2001. They found a producer in Roland Kempen of Die Streuner, with whom they would produce their first four albums over the next five years. During this time, several members dropped out to pursue or concentrate on academic or professional careers as the band gradually evolved from a mere hobby venture into an increasingly professional music project.
Between 2006 and 2008 the band was reorganized around longtime members Brigitta Jaroschek and Stephanie Keup. They started their own production firm which has been producing the group's albums ever since the fifth.
Typically a quintet, Die Irrlichter have performed with any number of musicians between two and six, and have increasingly been performing as a trio since 2013, with different lineups from a core group of regulars.
Medieval metal is a subgenre of folk metal that blends heavy metal music with medieval folk music. Medieval metal is mostly restricted to Germany where it is known as Mittelalter-Metal or Mittelalter-Rock. The genre emerged from the middle of the 1990s with contributions from Subway to Sally, In Extremo and Schandmaul. The style is characterised by the prominent use of a wide variety of traditional folk and medieval instruments.
Blackmore's Night is a British-American traditional folk rock band formed in 1997, consisting mainly of Ritchie Blackmore and Candice Night. Their lineup has seen many changes over the years, albeit for Backmore and Night who have been the only two constant members throughout the passing of time. To date, they have released eleven studio albums.
Tanzwut is a German Neue Deutsche Härte and Medieval metal band which originated as a side project of Corvus Corax members. The band uses a Medieval theme during their live performances which are expressed through their stagecraft, costumes and choreography.
Music of Serbia represents the musical heritage of Serbia, both historical and modern. It has a variety of traditional music styles, which are part of the wider Balkan musical tradition, with its own distinctive sound and characteristics.
Northwest Iberian folk music is a traditional highly distinctive folk style, located along Spain's north-west Atlantic coast, mostly Galicia and Asturias, that has some similarities with the neighbouring area of Cantabria. The music is characterized by the use of bagpipes.
In Extremo is a German Medieval metal band originating from Berlin. The band's musical style combines metal with Medieval traditional songs, blending the sound of the standard rock/metal instruments with historical instruments. Versions of well-known traditional/Medieval ballads make up the main part of their repertoire, but the band has written an increasing share of original material in recent years. Their own material is written in German, whilst the traditional songs and cover songs are in a variety of languages.
Philip Pickett is an English musician. Pickett was director of early music ensembles including the New London Consort, and taught at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He played recorders, shawms and similar instruments. In February 2015, Pickett received an 11-year prison sentence for the rape and sexual assault of pupils at the school.
Rauschpfeife is a commonly used term for a specific type of capped conical reed musical instrument of the woodwind family, used in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. In common with the crumhorn and cornamuse, it is a wooden double-reed instrument with the reed enclosed in a windcap. The player blows into a slot in the top of the windcap to produce the sound.
Piffaro, The Renaissance Band, originally called "The Philadelphia Renaissance Wind Band", is a Philadelphia-based early music ensemble. The group was founded in 1980, and performs music of the late Medieval and Renaissance periods. Piffaro's instrumentarium includes shawms, dulcians, sackbuts, recorders, krumhorns, bagpipes, lutes, guitars, and a variety of percussion.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), English art and high culture reached a pinnacle known as the height of the English Renaissance. Elizabethan music experienced a shift in popularity from sacred to secular music and the rise of instrumental music. Professional musicians were employed by the Church of England, the nobility, and the rising middle-class.
Non-religious secular music and sacred music were the two main genres of Western music during the Middle Ages and Renaissance era. The oldest written examples of secular music are songs with Latin lyrics. However, many secular songs were sung in the vernacular language, unlike the sacred songs that followed the Latin language of the Church. These earliest types were known as the chanson de geste and were popular amongst the traveling jongleurs and minstrels of the time.
Stary Olsa is a Belarusian medieval folk band, that plays medieval Ruthenian music of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The band has also released several classical rock cover works in their Medieval Classic Rock where classical rock songs performed by bagpipes.
Giles Lewin is a British violinist and bagpiper. Currently a member of The Carnival Band, he was also a founding member of the folk band, Bellowhead.
Faun is a German band that was formed in 1998 and plays pagan folk, darkwave, and medieval music. The originality of their music style is that it falls back to "old" instruments, and the singing is always the center of attention. The vocals are performed in a variety of languages, including German, English, Latin, Greek, and Scandinavian languages. Their instruments include Celtic harp, Swedish nyckelharpa, hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes, cittern, flutes, and many others.
An Evening of Carols and Capers is an album by Maddy Prior with The Carnival Band.
Oni Wytars is an early music ensemble that was founded in 1983 by Marco Ambrosini and Peter Rabanser.
The Prospect Before Us is a British folk rock album, by The Albion Dance Band, which was released in 1977 on the EMI Harvest label.
The Carnival Band is an English early music group. Their broad repertoire focuses on popular music from the 16th and 17th centuries, and traditional music from around the world. Presentation is informal and humorous, and in the spirit of medieval and renaissance Carnival. The band was founded by Andy Watts and Giles Lewin while they were members of the Medieval Players touring theatre company in the 1980s. They have had a long association with Maddy Prior.
The Mediæval Bæbes are a British musical ensemble founded in 1996 by Dorothy Carter and Katharine Blake. It included some of Blake's colleagues from the band Miranda Sex Garden, as well as other friends who shared her love of medieval music. The lineup often rotates from album to album, and ranges from six to twelve members. As of 2010, the group had sold some 500,000 records worldwide, their most successful being Worldes Blysse with 250,000 copies purchased.
Medieval Classic Rock is the thirteenth studio album of the Belarusian band Stary Olsa playing medieval folk. The album contains cover versions of rock hits of the second half of the 20th century played on medieval instruments. The album was released on August 15, 2016 through the American label Cool Hat Records. It was created under the influence of YouTube users’ feedback who admitted that the band's cover version video of "One" by Metallica was a success.
