Featuring four of the UK’s leading professional recorder players, Fontanella entertains audiences of all ages with a musical repertoire spanning more than seven hundred years. Performing on an array of recorders of every shape and size, from a beautiful 15-piece renaissance consort, to a set of quirky Paetzold ‘square’ basses, our concert programmes typically feature many styles of music, from early court dances and renaissance polyphony through to jazz arrangements, folk music sets and intriguing modern works by living composers.

The group has a long history of performing, broadcasting and recording across Britain and Europe, entertaining audiences at specialist early music venues, music clubs and festivals alike. The individual members of the ensemble also all have diverse and busy performing careers, ranging from working with ensembles including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and The Sixteen, appearing in film and TV recordings, performing with leading historical chamber music ensembles and working with electronic music. In 2021 the group featured in Channel 4’s show ‘8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown’.

Working as a quintet, their two CD recordings, Woods So Wild (BCR 014) and The Nightingale’s Response (BCR 015) together form a collection of music on the theme of birdsong and nature over the past seven centuries. Both albums are available widely online and from www.barncottagerecords.co.uk