The Goliards bring Medieval and Renaissance sounds to life in their latest Savannah concert

Take a step back into a bygone era, one where Kings and Queens held court to enchanting, and mystical sounds.

On Sunday, Savannah's own The Goliards will transport audiences during a recital of songs from the Tudor era accompanied by acclaimed soprano, Sheila Berg. The program will showcase songs sung for medieval royalty including King Henry VIII, King Francis I of France, Queen Anne Boleyn and more.

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The Goliards will accompany Berg with harpsichord, played by Anne Acker, founder and director of Savannah Baroque; Marcy Brenner on tenor viola da gamba; and John Hillenbrand on fiddle.

Hillenbrand, a longtime member and founder of The Goliards, says the music of the past can be brought to life in modern day in new and magical ways.

"The music of the past, when re-created in the present, becomes contemporary music," he shared. "We cannot provide the historic setting in which the music was originally performed, and we cannot provide the audiences for whom the music was written; however, we can attempt to provide a simulacrum of how the music might have been performed."

Prior to moving to Savannah, Hillenbrand performed with the Emory Early Music Consort in Atlanta for several years before founding The Goliards, then known as The Garlandia Ensemble, in 1998.

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Hillenbrand says he founded the Savannah ensemble with the intention of focusing on music from or before 1400, but the group has since involved to include pieces from the Renaissance, as will be on display on Sunday.

A devoted student of music history, Hillenbrand says one cannot look at the music of today, or the classical period, without going back further and understanding its original medieval roots.

"My favorite aspect of this genre of music is that it predates the megalomania of the composer," he noted. "Performers make many of the most important decisions, and there are only hints of what would become normal practice in succeeding centuries, such as obbligato instrumentation, dynamics markings, and so forth."

For fans of the era, this group has certainly done their homework.

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The instruments that will be used in the performance include a harpsichord built by Anne Acker; a Renaissance tenor viola da gamba, a copy of one built by Gasparo da Salò (1542-1609); a Medieval symphonia (hurdy gurdy); and a Renaissance fiddle, a copy of one played by an angel in Hans Memling's Reliquary of the Ursuline Convent in Bruges, Belgium.

It will be an authentic platform to host a bygone genre of music that is rare to see performed as it would have been in its day. The group says they hope it will transport listeners back to a time when things were much different, but developing culturally at a pace that can still be seen in today's art and music.

"I hope that we can transport the members of the audience to the England of the Tudors," Hillenbrand shared. "That is not possible, of course, so I would settle for providing them with an hour or so of beauty. Getting people to like this music is not really a problem; the difficulty is in getting them to hear it in the first place."

The final layer of the ensemble will be the enrapturing vocal performances of Berg, who has been with the group for about five years.

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She has performed with numerous choirs and ensembles, and has been the lead singer for a number of bands both in the U.S. and Europe. Hillenbrand says she had the shortest audition of any member. When she sight-read the period pieces on the spot, and nailed them, Hillenbrand knew they had found someone special to complete the group.

"Audience members will find that Sheila is intensely charismatic and has a voice like that of an angel," he shared.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah GA music: The Goliards perform medieval, Renaissance pieces