Member
Contact Information
shortoctave@gmail.comLocation
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Early Music Skills & Interests
Clavichord, Fortepiano, Harpsichord, Organ, Other Keyboard, Viola Da GambaEarly Music Affiliations
Administrator, Board Member -Other, Historical Dancer, Performer
Biography
Alastair Thompson (they or he) does a little bit of a whole lot of different things. As a keyboard player, Alastair was a founding member of Cavalier Consort, devoted to 17th-century English music for viols & organ. Their dance band, Blue Pearmain, plays historically-informed Georgian music for Regency & English country dancers. Other ensembles of which Alastair was a regular or founding member, generally as a continuo player, include Fourscore (trio sonatas with violins in scordatura), Heliotrope Consort, & Patalena. They have also been invited to be a guest artist with Ensemble Musica Humana, Les Enfants Terribles, the Zelenka Project, & the Weckmann Project. The viol consort Long & Away was even kind enough to allow Alastair to play viol with them in a concert that featured music paired with poetry. Alastair often collaborates with Massachusetts-based broken consort Seven Times Salt, having co-programmed two shows with them: a Scottish concert, Rantin’ Pipe and Tremblin’ String, & the Hallowe’en extravaganza The Corners of the Moon. In STS’s A Brave Barrel of Oysters, Alastair reads excerpts (in historical pronunciation) from the diary of Sam Pepys. As for theatrical projects, Alastair co-directed an independent production of the 1659 masque Cupid and Death, & over the years has danced in a variety of baroque operas at Amherst Early Music Festival & Tufts University. They have also in the past served on the boards of the Viola da Gamba Society — New England & the Cambridge Society for Early Music. For fun, Alastair does crewelwork & cryptic crosswords.
