Exquisite Noyse is actually an expedition team; but not one clad in pith helmets, wielding machetes which battles its way through the jungles of the Amazon. Our destination is good old Europe, more precisely the Europe of the 16th century,and our most important weapons are our stringed instruments. Just as the impenetrable jungle conceals many things, so much of the origins of music for the violin family has been lost in the mists of the last five centuries. Hence the mission of Exquisite Noyse: to work with the repertoire, performance techniques and the instruments of the Renaissance creatively and imaginatively in order to reproduce the surprising and fresh sound the violin family made when it was still a new technical achievement in a time of the last five centuries. Hence the mission of Exquisite Noyse: to work with the repertoire, performance techniques and the instruments of the Renaissance creatively and imaginatively in order to reproduce the surprising and fresh sound the violin family made when it was still a new technical achievement in a time of groundbreaking changes in music. This music, the violin’s first “voice” – vibrant, seductive, fresh and unfettered by the conventions that developed in later centuries – leaps from the strings and crosses the divide of centuries to find new listeners and make new discoveries. And that can be as exciting as any expedition to the Amazon!