"A luminous ECM recording...a lovely thing."
(BBC Radio 3)

Alternative History brings together singer John Potter and violinist-singer Anna Maria Friman with lutenists Ariel Abramovich and Jacob Heringman, to create unique new repertoires from historical performance practice.

Their debut album Secret History (ECM New Series 2119), follows the 16th-century practice of arranging choral music for voices and lutes, and features sacred music by Desprez and Victoria as it might have been performed in 17th-century England. Their second album Amores pasados (ECM New Series 2441) takes the concept into a parallel universe where the Early Music movement happened in the 1920s, when songs and choral music by Peter Warlock, E. J. Moeran and their contemporaries are re-imagined as the lute songs these composers never actually wrote but might have heard in their heads. What results is a journey into the imagination, a sound picture of an alternative history. The album also showcases music by Rock musicians John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) and Sting, songwriters who more than hold their own with their Renaissance predecessors, Dowland and Campion, and who have recently composed new, specially-dedicated pieces for the group, alongside others by Tony Banks (Genesis).