Ensemble Collinetto

Eugenia Corrieri (voice)
Alberto Crugnola (lute, hurdy-gurdy)
Isacco Colombo  (shawm, flute)
Dani Pelagatti (bombard)
Félix Stricker  (slide trumpet, trombone)

Colin, "Colinet" or "Collinetto" are names that one tends to encounter in connection with various prestidigitators, jugglers and itinerant musicians active at the European courts in the 15th century. The name "Colino and his group" seems to be used by some chroniclers as a generic reference to a typical woodwind band, the so-called "Alta Cappella" or "Pifari", to use a simpler reference that was also often employed.

The Alta Cappella was a common presence at public and private festive occasions which called for musical embellishment, especially in vogue at courtly dancing parties of late medieval and the Renaissance periods. In the 15th century, the heyday of Alta Cappella, the bands consisted of shawms and bombards (both of the double-reed instrument family that preceded the modern oboe) to which slide trumpets and, towards the end of the century, also trombones started to be added as advances on earlier instruments.

"Ensemble Collinetto" represents the tradition of Alta Cappella as revived at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, a Basle-based Swiss early music research institute. It was at the Schola that the typical woodwind formation of the time was recreated in the 1970s. Since then, generations of students have continued researching early woodwind music, in the process attracting considerable popularity with numerous performances offered in Swiss, French, German and Italian concert halls. The most important appearances of the Ensemble include the solemn final ceremony of the Petrucci festivities organised at the Basle Art Museum (2001) in celebration of the 5th centenary of printed music and conducted jointly by Evelyn Tubb and Anthony Rooley. In December 2000, the Ensemble received the "TransRegioPreis" of the European Cultural Foundation.