Martin Best Medieval Ensemble

Martin Best established the medieval music group that carries his own name and pursued an existence akin to a modern wandering minstrel. His initial training came through an apprenticeship in classical guitar under two preeminent twentieth-century virtuosos, Andrés Segovia and John Williams. He then completed his formative travels by residing among villagers in a remote Spanish hamlet, embracing an austere existence centered on folk traditions. This period led him into a recording career that produced numerous vocal and instrumental collections spanning English popular song from the era of Shakespeare through the twentieth century, performed in English, Spanish, French, and Provençal. By 1981, however, he concentrated exclusively on the troubadour repertory of medieval Europe, which he had earlier described as his “first love,” and accordingly assembled the Martin Best Medieval Ensemble.

Throughout the 1980s that ensemble, together with the related Martin Best Consort, invigorated England’s early-music landscape through a sequence of Nimbus Records releases. Each disc offered a sonically distinctive interpretation of works by Guiraut Riquier, Bernart de Ventadorn, Italian and southern French poets contemporary with Dante, additional troubadours and trouvéres, the Lamento di Tristan, and the Cantigas de Santa Maria. During the same decade the musicians also prepared a succession of medieval programs for the BBC and made their first appearances in Britain’s leading halls, including Wigmore Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and the Proms.