Chantador of course means 'singer' and Bernard de Ventadorn was fully worthy of the title. A troubadour from the Limoges region in the 12th century, he wrote love poems in Occitan and set them to music and was at the route of many rumours as to his legitamacy. There are a number of texts and music attributed to him that has survived in chansonniers, manuscripts that are veritable song-books, which was equalled by very few other troubadours of the time. Forty-one cansos, poems with love alone as their subject, can be attributed to him with certainty; his musical settings for seventeen of these have also survived. Performed here by singer Paloma Gutirrez del Arroyo, she specialises in occidental medieval repertoires (before 1500) and has been trained across Europe by some of the experts in this field. She's co-founder of the medieval music ensembles Puy de sons dautrefois and Oiet, and of the vocal quartet Cantaderas, (devoted to Spanish traditional music and related Early Music repertoires) and has duetted with actors and sung in theatres and contemporary music projects. Harpist Manuel Vilas was born in Santiago de Compostela (Spain), and plays early harps (from 12th to 18th century), studying Spanish arpa de dos ordenes with Nuria Llopis and Italian arpa doppia with Mara Galassi. He performs solo programmes focused on Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music both from Spain and America.
