Performance ****      Recording *****

“… A smattering of Purcell, dances from Playford’s Dancing Master, shanties, reels and ballads succumb to a nine-piece ensemble drawing on Baroque, jazz and folk styles for a no holds barred hooley of riotous improvisatory give and take…The result is more gastropub than spit-and-sawdust hostelry, but ‘cheers’ all the same!”

The Strad Recommends

“Eike is a charismatic artist with a talent for conceiving imaginative live and recording projects … The recording is resonant but carries the full ensemble equally (up to nine players in all). Innately theatrical, genre bending and suffused with great musicianship and string playing, this is a substantial and fine piece of work. 

“Bjarte Eike’s Barokksolistene is an alchemical miracle of an ensemble, a collective of virtuosos whose instinctive, playful communication and delight in one another’s skill amplifies their individual performances, transforming them into pure musical gold … here’s a wonderfully egalitarian quality to music-making that weaves its way from court to dockyard to tavern without pause. Good music is, after all, good music, whatever its colour, creed or accent.”

“I must admit that the prospect of a musical recreation of a long boozy session in a seventeenth-century tavern had me on high cringe-alert, but I'm so very glad I gave this a spin - the result somehow manages to feel authentic and contemporary at the same time (and had one of my most curmudgeonly colleagues dancing in his seat when he thought I wasn't looking).”

“As Barokksolistene’s slogan reminds us, “It’s just old pop music”. Performers like this are unlocking the joy in this music, and that might be the most valuable authenticity of all.”  - Review of Live performance