Our current cultural climate has increased the pace of change. This is exemplified by the blinding rate of images-per-second in commercial media. It is easy, even fashionable, to view anything “old” as dispensable: Clothing, hairstyles, music. Moreover, the designation “old” seems to apply to an ever-compressing interval of time. Even retro crazes now reference material from less than a generation ago.

Ironically, three women from Scandinavia have reached back more than half a millennium to find music of startling beauty, freshness and vitality. Doubly ironic, but welcome nevertheless, is the warm reception with which this repertoire has been received, communicating far beyond the domain of early music enthusiasts to a much wider audience. Chances are, no matter how little the fourteenth century meant to you before, after hearing Trio Mediaeval sing, you will feel a connection with the musical world of this distant past. What’s more, unlike some period ensembles that perform early music exclusively, the trio has made a practice of performing compositions from other eras as well.

Trio Mediaeval, comprised of Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Torunn Østrem Ossum, formed in Oslo, Norway in 1997. In 1998, they attended a summer course in Cambridge, England run by prominent vocal group the Hilliard Ensemble [profiled, along with Christoph Poppen, in CP10, Copper Press issue ten]. This proved to be a formative part of the trio’s development. The group returned to the ensemble’s summer program in 1999 and 2000; Hilliard member John Potter has continued to advise and assist the trio.

Since 1999, they have been performing concerts in the public schools of Norway on behalf of the Rikskonsertene (The Norwegian Concert Institute). In 2001, they released their first CD on ECM Records, Words of the Angel. Their second CD, Soir dit-elle, was released in January 2004 (also on ECM). Both of these spent several weeks in the top ten of the Billboard classical music charts.