We are enjoying spring in Newport, but we are already looking ahead to the start of summer, when Newport Classical will present our final Chamber Series concert of the season on June 13, featuring the very special, internationally acclaimed group Trio Mediaeval. I can say with confidence that this is a performance not to miss. Newport Classical’s Chamber Series concerts take place downtown at the Newport Classical Recital Hall, and are perfect for a variety of occasions – gathering with a group of friends, bringing your family to a welcoming cultural experience, a memorable date night, or even a solo evening of deserved “me time” to relax and recharge.
Our 2024-2025 Chamber Series finale concert on June 13 features the Grammy-nominated Trio Mediaeval, known for their crystalline voices and unbelievable blend. The New York Times has reported, “few vocal ensembles produce quite as beautiful and finely blended a sound as this Norwegian trio.” In Newport, Trio Mediaeval – Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth, and Jorunn Lovise Husan – will perform a beautiful program of traditional songs, hymns, fiddle tunes, and ballads, immersing us in the distinct sonic worlds of Swedish and Norwegian vocal folk music.
Trio Mediaeval was founded in 1997, and has since toured extensively throughout Europe and the United States, as well as in Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea, and Australia, performing at venues including Carnegie Hall in New York; the Barbican Centre in London; the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; the Vienna Konzerthaus; the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, and other iconic halls throughout the world.
A typical Trio Mediaeval concert combines varied strands of musical exploration – from medieval sacred music and folk music (adapted and arranged by the trio), to contemporary Nordic jazz and improvisation. The San Francisco Chronicle raved, “Singing doesn’t get more unnervingly beautiful.” We are very much looking forward to welcoming Trio Mediaeval to Newport and sharing the group’s incredible artistry with you.
As many of you know already, Newport Classical brings timeless music for today to the city all year long through the one-of-a-kind Newport Classical Music Festival, which takes place each July in Newport’s iconic mansions and uniquely intimate venues across Aquidneck Island; the Chamber Series at the Newport Classical Recital Hall downtown on Dearborn Street, held from September through June; the Community Concerts Series, which brings free performances to families right in their own neighborhoods; and our Music Education and Engagement Initiative which has inspired and enriched the lives of over 2,400 children through in-school and community engagements since 2021.
Tickets are already on sale for the 2025 Newport Classical Music Festival, which runs from July 4-22 and this year includes 29 concerts featuring over 100 musicians performing at 11 iconic venues. Full details are available now on our website, newportclassical.org. I encourage you to make plans and purchase tickets soon to avoid disappointment – we are expecting many of the performances to be at capacity again this summer.
We caught up with Trio Mediaeval this month to ask them about their program and what they are looking forward to about being in Newport in June.
Gillian Fox: You travel the country and the world performing. What are some of the rewards and challenges about doing this work?
Trio Mediaeval: First, what really motivates us is the joy to sing and perform fantastic music and to sing and perform with wonderful colleagues and friends. We have fun. It is also great to experience new places and to meet people and cultures from different parts of the world. Sometimes we also have collaborations with other musicians, ensembles, and orchestras, which is very exciting. We have been very fortunate to present our music throughout Europe, USA (32 states), Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea and Australia. Since we are only three singers and have no large instruments to carry it is quite easy for us to travel. We very much enjoy the variety of venues we visit: churches, cathedrals, monasteries, farms, clubs, industrial spaces, private homes, outdoor arenas and museums as well some of the most prestigious stages in the world. The most challenging thing is to be away from our families when we have extensive overseas tours, but that is a part of our work as musicians.
Gillian Fox: Tell us a little bit about this concert program. How did you approach creating it?
Trio Mediaeval: We usually plan our programs carefully looking at the venue, the context, and the acoustics that we will be working with. For concerts in churches or cathedrals with very long reverb we usually choose a sacred program with more focus on medieval music that fits to the context. For venues such as concert halls, theatres, and barns where the acoustics might be slightly less reverberant we try to find repertoire that works well for that space. It also depends of course on how much freedom we have from the festival or promoter’s side. For the Newport concert, we were completely able to choose a program from our own choice, which is wonderful.
Norwegian and Swedish folk songs have complemented our repertoire of sacred music and contemporary pieces. We very much enjoy creating our own arrangements of the tunes to fit specifically with our voices and line-up. This is a programme where we also present the Norwegian hardinger fiddle in some of the arrangements. Originally, the folk songs were all a part of daily life; people created tunes and texts for all sorts of daily events and special occasions. In this program we present a selection of love songs, wedding tunes, lullabies, sun-prayers, ballads and hymns. None of this music was composed to be a part of the concert scene nor to be performed for an audience, as we understand the term today. In the twentieth century, ethnographers and folk song collectors began to record these wonderful songs and tunes, and a vast number of melodies have been transcribed and preserved for future generations of singers and listeners.
Gillian Fox: What do you most want to convey to your audiences during a concert like this one?
Trio Mediaeval: We want the audience to experience music that they might not have heard before. It is quite a listening friendly programme with beautiful melodies and rhythms. In the same way that cultures, languages, and dialects vary from place to place, so do forms of musical expression. We would like to see this performance as our contribution to a living oral tradition; although these songs bear our musical imprint, they are coloured by all those who have performed and passed on the music before us. Warm welcome to our concert on the 13th of June!
Gillian Fox: Is there anything you’re looking forward to doing or seeing while you’re in Newport?
Trio Mediaeval: We always enjoy visiting a new town and area and meeting our audience. Newport looks beautiful and we are very much looking forward to exploring the town and the surroundings. All the trio members live close to the sea in Norway and Sweden. Linn Andrea in Oslo, Jorunn Lovise in Stavanger, and Anna Maria in Gothenburg – so a town close to the sea is something that feels close to home for us.
Tickets for all Newport Classical concerts can be purchased online at www.newportclassical.org/concerts.
Gillian Fox is the executive director of Newport Classical. Her column appears monthly in The Newport Daily News and on newportri.com.
Newport Classical brings internationally acclaimed trio Mediaeval to Newport in June – Newport Daily News
