In March 2019 Stef joins the mighty medieval music ensemble Sequentia to work on a new programme, ‘Charms, Riddles, and Elegies of the Medieval Northlands.’ Having been an admirer of the group’s work for many years, she is hugely excited to begin this collaboration with director and performer Benjamin Bagby, soprano and harpist Hanna Marti , flute and lyre player Norbert Rodenkirchen, and Anglo-Saxonist and poet Craig Williamson. In addition to the privilege of working with some of the finest and most creative medieval music performers in the world and a beautifully sensitive translator of Old English poetry, this project brings the opportunity for Stef to fulfil a lifelong dream of singing the Old English elegy known as ‘The Wife’s Lament’—a bitter lament of abandonment and betrayal that anyone who has ever suffered a painful breakup can relate to!

The premiere performance is on Friday 1st March at Swarthmore College, PA, USA. Further performances will follow, including Boston Early Music Festival, in June 2019. Benjamin Bagby introduces the program thus:

These are songs of magic, healing, exile, of the uncertainty of fate, of a wandering poet/singer searching for a patron, funeral songs and celebrations of life-giving magic herbs. Their sources are varied: the Old English Beowulf epic, the Old Icelandic poetic Edda, and the few poems surviving in ancient songbooks such as The Exeter Book. Each of these songs is a glimpse into another time far from ours, and into the souls of poets, warriors, valkyries and seeresses, bards and philosophers, whose creations were the first to be written down in English and other Germanic languages. In addition to songs in English, there will be Old High German and Old Icelandic songs of conjuring, magic, and lament as well. The world of the pagan medieval north, just turning to Christianity, will be explored, using the oldest sources known to us today. The featured instruments will include 6-string Germanic harps, triangular harps, wooden flutes and a swan-bone flute.

The program will include performances of the following:

• Old English riddles;
• the Anglo-Saxon magic Charm of Nine Herbs, a story of healing;
• from the Old Icelandic ‘Edda’, the Song of Grotti’s Millstone: two giant slave-girls are forced to grind out magical wealth for King Grotti, until they rebel…
• Deor, the lament of a tribal singer no longer favored by his chieftain;
• the Wanderer: a powerful song of lonely travel in icy winter, fate, and regret;
• Wulf and Eadwacer: the mysterious lament of a woman cut off from her man;
• some of the oldest recorded songs of the German-speaking peoples.

For further details, visit the Swarthmore College website.