Alternative History Quartet: 'Amores pasados'

'So compelling.’ Gramophone

Alternative History are a unique quartet employing British Rock and Art Song to illuminate the music of the Renaissance, combining the collective sensibilities of singer John Potter, violinist-singer Anna Maria Friman and lutenists Jacob Herringman and Ariel Abramovich. Their ground-breaking work is inspired by the practice of Renaissance musicians rearranging the acappella polyphony of their predecessors and contemporaries for voices and lutes, envisioning a parallel universe where the Early Music movement happened in the 1920s, when songs and choral music by Warlock and Moeran are re-imagined as the lute songs these composers never actually wrote but might have heard in their heads. What results is a journey into the imagination; a sound picture of an alternative history.

The programme 'Amores pasados' takes its name from the title piece by John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) on the ensemble's eponymous second album - a work setting poetry from the three great ages of Spanish literature. The work is complemented by pieces dedicated specially to the ensemble by two other grandees of British Rock: Sting and Tony Banks (Genesis) - songwriters who more than hold their own with their British Renaissance predecessor also featured here, Thomas Campion. Known also for their celebrated recordings of Spanish Renaissance music, the quartet complete this musical gesture of British-Spanish cultural exchange with intabulations of works by Victoria and Morales, visualising them as they might have been performed in 17th-century England.

John Paul Jones Amores pasados
Anon Inviolata integra et casta esTomas Luis de Victoria Inviolata integra et casta es
Cristobel de Morales O magnum mysterium
Ernest John Moeran River God’s Song | Oh Fair Enough are Sky and Plain | Under the Greenwood Tree
Thomas Dunhill Had I the Heavens Embroidered Cloths
Peter Warlock Corpus Christi                                               
Arvo Pärt Pari Intervallo
Sting Bury me Deep
Thomas Campion Oft have I Sighed
Peter Erskine Ash and Snow
Gavin Bryars Sonnet 128                                                  
Tony Banks That Time of Year

Alternative History Quartet

SNEAK PEEK! Video Clip

This is an ILAMS concert organised in collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes and St Clement Danes with the kind support of the Continuo Foundation, as part of Echoes Festival 2026

MORE INFORMATION 

ilams.org.uk | londres.cervantes.es | stclementdanesraf.org