In March 2023, I backed the SeeAir Tankless Dive System on Kickstarter. Compact, battery-powered underwater breathing gadget. Polished renders, a slick video, spec sheets that looked legit. $362 for the dive unit and a couple accessories. Seemed fair.
This weekend Dan Laurin is giving a masterclass in Esbjerg, and me and Michael are going to play Belicha, an estampitta from the 14th century Italy. As far as I've understood, there was much culture imported from the middle east to Italy at this time, and you weren't really in style if you didn't have your clothes imported from Istanbul. Grove lists this piece as a dance, but I think many would agree to this being more improvised music. I sure would like to see someone dance to it. So I've been at the library borrowing stacks of music with Taksims (Taqsīm) trying to get to know the contemporary arab classical music more. According to Grove, Taqsīm means dimunition and is a form dating back to the 18th century, but I haven't been able to find any earlier forms leading up to the taqsīms until now, so these will have to do. And my imediate reaction is that early music lovers should get some CDs and listen to this! There is so much brilliant music and musicians in this genre! I'll definetly use their input for improving my Belicha. Perhaps not for this masterclass, but certainly during this semester. Lots of great ornaments to be "borrowed". 
Hi, I'm a new co-author to this blog and early music is quite new to me although i have played it all my life. I am mostly puzzled, stupiefied and amazed by the things possible (and impossible) in early music and i hope my startlement will only increase as more early music reveals itself before my anxious eyes and fingers.
Sarah Peck has started to build a gamba. It's all nicely documented on her blog and the progression will be linked in the column to the right. Check out the first entries about the beginning: 
and how far she has come today: 
Looking forward to following your progress, Sarah. Keep us updated!
Hi, I thought I'd give you a heads-up on what's happening with the blog. It's now almost one month ago that the blog officially came up on http://earlymusicblog.net and we've added a number of features. We've now got the most recent scores from the Werner Icking Music Archive linked in the sidebar, a number of blogs linked up and their resent posts linked and made bookmarking on different bookmarking services up and running. Not to mention a little set of entries and a couple of design changes.
