by Daniel Hathaway

The Boston-based “Broken Consort” visits the Helen D. Schubert Concert Series at St. John’s Cathedral in Cleveland on Friday evening, March 8 at 7:30 for a concert of Iberian music of the thirteenth century as preserved in manuscripts in the northern Spanish city of Burgos.

First off, you may be wondering why this consort is “broken.” Nothing needs fixing — the term refers to an ensemble made up of different families of instruments rather than consorts of similar instruments like viols (a tradition that survives in the classical string quartet). But founder Emily Lau was inspired to form the group because she thought something definitely needed fixing in the way early music was performed. [Read more…]