Danceable, expressive, thoroughly researched and at the same time nonchalantly in tune with the times: The Playfords are one of the few early music ensembles that improvise on stage off the cuff and thus truly embody historically informed performance practice. Inspired by the music, literature and attitude to life of the 16th and 17th centuries, they weave these traditions into a total work of art consisting of early music, folk, jazz, world music, poetry and dance - Inspired Early Music.
The ensemble The Playfords is named after John and Henry Playford’s collection ‘The English Dancing Master’ (1651). A Real Book of its time providing notated Hit-melodies on fitting dance steps. Harmonies and Bass were to be improvised by the performing musicians, their essential character determined by those own predilections and particular talents. This was a welcome challenge to any virtuosic musician’s creativity – then as well as now.
The Playfords have performed at the Oude Muziek Festival in Utrecht, the Staufen Music Week, the MDR Music Summer, the Gewandhaus Leipzig, the Berlin Philharmonie and at several venues in Belarus and India at the invitation of the Goethe-Institut. In 2015, they represented the state of Thuringia at the EXPO in Milan. So far seven CDs have been released at Coviello Classics, Raumklang and DHM.
With the annual “Playground Festival of early music folk” in Weimar, The Playfords have created a forum in which different, innovative approaches to early music meet, but also in which European and non-European musical traditions enter into a dialog. Dance and improvisation workshops and early music jam sessions round off the programme.