Flores Musicae 2024 – Medieval and renaissance music festival

ADONIA – The story of Venus and Adonis through the eyes of the Italian Renaissance

ENSEMBLE PHAEDRUS (USA, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Italy, Slovenia)

Miriam Trevisan, voice

Johanna Bartz, Renaissance transverse flute

Charlotte Schneider, Renaissance transverse flute

Luis Martinez Pueyo, Renaissance transverse flute

Mara Winter, Renaissance transverse flute, artistic direction

Bor Zuljan, lutes, colascione

Massimiliano Dragoni, percussion

The Phaedrus Ensemble was founded in 2018 in Basel on the initiative of American flutist Mara Winter. The core of the group is a four-member consort of Renaissance transverse flutes, joined by Italian singer and percussionist Miriam Trevisan and Massimiliano Dragoni, as well as festival artistic director Bor Zuljan. They were united by a shared fascination with the powerful yet subtle beauty of Renaissance music and the humanist philosophy and rhetorical practices that gave music in the 16th and 17th centuries its distinctive character. With this in mind, the name ‘Phaedrus’ was chosen from Plato’s classic text in which Socrates argued that the art of rhetoric derives from madness, divine inspiration and above all love.

The group was a finalist in the Utrecht Early Music Ensemble Competition and released their first CD Adonia in 2022 on the Belgian label Passacaille, which was well received. They will also be performing this programme, which retells the ancient myth of Venus and Adonis through the eyes of the Italian Renaissance, at the Flores Musicae festival.