The Whole Noyse Ensemble

The Whole Noyse was founded in 1986 to emulate the professional wind bands of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whose primary instruments were the expressive brass and woodwinds of the period - cornett, sackbut, and curtal. 

• The cornett is a woodwind with trumpet-style mouthpiece.

• The "sackbut" is an earlier English term for the trombone.

• The curtal is the renaissance ancestor of the bassoon.

The group takes its name from a term from renaissance England, when a musical ensemble was called a "noise" (usually spelled "noyse" at the time); a quintet was known as a "whole noyse."  The Whole Noyse has established itself as one of the Bay Area's leading early music ensembles.  The group has made repeated appearances on the San Francisco Early Music Society concert series and has presented concerts for the early music societies of Vancouver, BC, and San Diego, California, as well as in numerous other venues. Together with San Francisco's baroque ensemble Magnificat and with the Vancouver Cantata Singers, they have performed and recorded major works of the seventeenth century by Monteverdi, Schütz, Rigatti, Cavalli, Cavalieri, the Gabrielis, and others.  In 1990 The Whole Noyse made its European debut, with concerts at the "Tage alter Musik" in Regensburg and at the Vigado in Budapest; more recently it was invited to perform at early music festivals in Gorizia and Langhirano, Italy.  The Whole Noyse CD "Lo Splendore d'Italia" is available on the Helicon label.