Desire paths (noun): unplanned routes or paths formed by repeated foot traffic

To be a performer is to be making constant choices about the directions we take, navigating through tradition and performance practice, and the changing landscapes of taste, social context and the world around us. Contemporary sources, treatises, recordings, or other musicians may provide some kind of map of these lands, but there may be more than one way to reach the same destination. It takes courage to walk away from the well-trodden track.

Now that the “historically informed” performance practice movement is old enough to be subject to its own analysis, this programme aims to explore what we can learn from some of the paths that have fallen into disuse, and what it means to carve new ones into uncharted territory.

This solo recorder programme brings together reworkings of Fantasias by Georg Phillip Telemann with new compositions by Andrea Balency-Béarn, James Garner, Brian Inglis, and Krista Antenucci, all of which build on existing material as a starting point for new musical invention.

Part of Bloomsbury Festival’s New Wave programme, a platform for emerging talent.