The Alehouse Sessions

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Everyone in the Barokksolistene is expected to sing, dance, move, play multiple instruments and generally have fun. Bjarte Eike’s Barokksolistene is an alchemical miracle of an ensemble, a collective of virtuosos whose instinctive, playful communication and delight in one another’s skill amplifies their individual performances, transforming them into pure musical gold … here’s a wonderfully egalitarian quality to music-making that weaves its way from court to dockyard to tavern without pause. Barokksolistene’s signature project “The Alehouse Sessions”, devised and curated by Bjarte Eike, has been made into a film for television.

Well, given that Oliver Cromwell had just shut down theatres across the country, which would remain the case for 18 years, they would end up being your prime source of live entertainment. For access to the Queen Elizabeth Hall auditorium seating rows A to C and wheelchair spaces in the Front Stalls, please enter via the Artists' Entrance in the Queen Elizabeth Hall Slip Road (Level 1). Google Analytics sets this cookie to calculate visitor, session and campaign data and track site usage for the site's analytics report. Some years ago, I came across Playford’s book of dance tunes – most of these have just a line of melody faintly sketched out. Some four centuries later, the Barokksolistene created the Alehouse Sessions, a project in which they perform folk melodies, sea-shanties, bawdy ballads and cheeky ditties alongside ayres and dances by Purcelland Playford in homage to the sonic world of 17th century tavern music.These “Alehouse Sessions,” in both recorded and live form, are exemplary in their ability to melt the cages of censorship into tenderer weapons of humanity. The Alehouse Sessions” has already enjoyed success in both the US and Europe, and you can get in on the action on September 23 at the Southbank Centre. Leap forward to those days in December 2022, and we find ourselves sitting around a table, drinking beer, gossiping and playing music at London’s 17th Century George Inn.

The Boys, otherwise known as Barokksolistene, provide the entertainment, playing music by Purcell and Playford, as well as sea shanties and folk songs – all from memory.The Alehouse Sessions aims to capture the atmosphere and sounds of London at a time where the theatres were closed (thanks to Oliver Cromwell).

Eike is a charismatic artist with a talent for conceiving imaginative live and recording projects … Innately theatrical, genre bending and suffused with great musicianship and string playing, this is a substantial and fine piece of work. This was, perhaps, the greatest pleasure of seeing the Alehouse Boys in the flesh, by which the rigor and body work that goes into such a performance came across with unique authenticity. A joyful celebration of 17th-century folk music, fiddle tunes, drinking songs and sea shanties, brought vividly to life by virtuoso musicians Bjarte Eike and Barokksolistene. It’s packed full of exercises for students, plus examples from the standard repertoire to show you how to integrate the technique into your playing. Above all I just knew that if we were going to play this kind of English music, we had to take it back to where it was performed.Venue-provided beer in hand, they shared a toast with the audience before diving into a flow so evocative that “atmospheric” barely does justice to describing its escapist power. For step-free access from the Queen Elizabeth Hall Slip Road off Belvedere Road to the Queen Elizabeth Hall auditorium seating (excluding rows A to C) and wheelchair spaces in the Rear Stalls, plus Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer and the Purcell Room, please use the Queen Elizabeth Hall main entrance.

A new flowering of theatre music takes place, where masques and dumbshows rub alongside Shakespeare and commedia dell’arte in beautiful union.

Forty years on, Eike has taken that restless energy and curiosity and channelled it into one of music’s most exhilarating, anarchic projects: the Alehouse Sessions. Commissioned by the BBC and directed by award-winning director Dominic Best (AdLib Productions), the film will be premiered on BBC TV in late April 2023.