Ensemble ALTA MUSICA  Artistic director: Rainer Böhm "In our christian times there are countless wind players who play at religious festivals, wedding celebrations and at the splendid banquets of the nobility. They play sacred and secular music of all types on their instruments, gracefully and full of inventiveness."  -  Johannes Tinctoris, 1487 In the Middle Ages, Alta Capella (alta = loud, high) was the instrumental ensemble which was called upon to play for ceremonial occasions such as coronations, weddings and banquets. The modern term Alta Capella originates with the fifteenth-century music theorist Johannes Tinctoris of Brabant, who coined this term for the combination of shawm, bombarde and slide trumpet. The musicians of the Middle Ages had other terms for an ensemble of loud wind instruments. Wind players were known as pifferi in Italy, hauts ménestrels in France and pfeifer in Germany. To promote the research and performance of medieval wind music, Rainer Böhm founded ALTA MUSICA in Berlin in 1985. Outside this specialist field, ALTA MUSICA has studied the entire spectrum of medieval music and has added the necessary "soft" instruments such as fiddle, recorders, portative and string tambourine to the original "loud" wind ensemble. The repertoire of the Berlin ensemble now includes all kinds of medieval music, from the monophony of the troubadours and minnesingers through 14th-century three-part motets and instrumental pieces up to the four-part masses of the fifteenth century. Concert tours and appearances at various international early music festivals, along with radio and television recordings, have taken ALTA MUSICA to Belgium, Danmark, Germany, England, France, Holland, Italy, Poland and Switzerland. artistic director: Rainer Böhm (shawm, recorder), Dagmar Jaenicke (bombard, recorder), Petra Prieß (fiddle) Caroline Schneider (shawm, alto), Thomas Voehringer-Kuhnt (bombard) ALTA MUSICA has no problem in varying the size and line-up of the ensemble according to the wishes of the organizers and the thematic demands of the occasion. Everything is possible from a trio to the full ensemble of six singers and eight instrumentalists. The ensemble will be expanded in several programmes by additional singers and instrumentalists, with whom ALTA MUSICA regulary works. Antonia Biemer (soprano), Miriam Fahnert (soprano), Amy Green (soprano, harp), Maria Köpcke (soprano), Julia Meinecke (soprano), Juliane Sprengel (soprano), Anna Steigenberger (soprano), Anja Schumacher (alto), Markus Schuck (tenor), Christoph Biemer (baritone), Sören Fischer (sackbut), Michael Metzler (percussion)