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Mr Isaac was the most important dancing-master at the late-Stuart court in London. He wrote dances for performance at court, several celebrating Queen Anne's birthdays, and others named after significant court figures or historic political events. He was fashionable, published, and outstandingly individual, so why is he a little-known feature of the baroque dance scene today? Well, one of the main reasons is that recordings of the music are scarce. Only the tunes are given in the dance prints, so we are making arrangements with bass lines, continuo and additional treble parts to suit the style and character of each dance. The Isaac Project aims to make a recording of each dance that will allow dancers around the world to explore, perform and enjoy this characterful collection more fully. We're delighted to have enlisted the help and advice of Jennifer Thorp, who has recently published 'The Book' about Mr Isaac and his fascinating collection of dances, and baroque dance expert Mary Collins who has been telling us for years that these things are worth exploring! So we have been exploring, and have been delighted to discover that they really are worth it! The choreography is fun, and witty, and characterful, showing a quirky individual style that must surely have been much enjoyed at the court. And musically we've found that the given melodies are unfailingly good (in fact we should perhaps issue a warning for lots of toe-tapping earworms...) and have lent themselves to transcription and arrangement into what promises to be a very good listen, with or without the dancing! |
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Of highest importance in this project is that whatever we record, it's main aim is to allow more people to access the repertoire, so we're taking care to rehearse the music and choreography together in order to fully understand the character, appropriate speeds, and individual inflections of each dance. It's a lot of choreography. So we've decided to make the recording in two stages so we can focus on a manageable portion of the collection at a time. The first stage took place in November of 2024 and we expanded the band to include Fernando Santiago Serrano dos Santos (violin), Rebecca Miles (recorders and violin), and Matthew Nisbet (theorbo and baroque guitar). Our engineer and producer is the renowned Adrian Hunter, with whom both Lynda and Alison have recorded many projects before.
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Volume 1 is now out!
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Generously supported by Angel Early Music 
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... a project which has brought together respected dancers and musicians to produce a lively, sensitive and immensely danceable recording - Jennifer Thorp
[Apollo’s Revels] are preparing arrangements of dance music for which only the treble line is extant, and they are working in close connection with dancers and dance scholars to make sure that their arrangements are "danceable"... And by the evidence of their first volume, recently released, they are succeeding admirably! These recordings are particularly significant now, in light of the recent publication of Jennifer Thorp's _The Gentleman Dancing-Master: Mr Isaac and the English Royal Court from Charles II to Queen Anne_, …Readers who wish to study these notated dances… will benefit greatly from having access to recordings of their music… I am delighted that the recordings by Apollo's Revels will allow me to include Isaac's dances in my teaching repertory. - Ken Pierce
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