Dance, Music, & Song Camps
Alastair Thompson (harpsichord, historic dance) (they or he) does a little bit of a whole lot of different things. They grew up in a household full of Scottish folk dance and music, and pursued musical interests in college alongside a degree in medieval studies. They have been a regular continuo-playing member of a variety of Boston-based chamber groups, including Heliotrope Consort, Patalena, Fourscore, the Cavalier Consort (which specialized in fascinating seventeenth-century English music for viols, violins, and organ), as well as a guest artist with many other groups, such as Ensemble Musica Humana & Les Enfants Terribles.
Alastair is a founding member of the historically-informed dance band Blue Pearmain, which brings a New England flavor to the social dance music of the Georgian era.
Alastair loves collaborating with MA-based broken consort Seven Times Salt, not only on the spinet, but also as an actor portraying Sam Pepys with 17th-century pronunciation.
As for theatrical projects, Alastair co-directed an independent production of the 1657 masque Cupid and Death, and over the years has danced in a variety of baroque operas at Amherst Early Music Festival and Tufts University.
Alastair has been a staff accompanist at Amherst Early Music Festival and Mideast Workshop in Pittsburgh, where they now live. They have also in the past served on the boards of the Viola da Gamba Society–New England and the Cambridge Society for Early Music. For fun, Alastair does crewelwork & cryptic crosswords.