Martin Best, founder of the medieval music ensemble that bears his name, has lived a life of latter-day minstrelsy. He first learned the craft of music as an apprentice: he studied classical guitar with two of the twentieth century's greatest masters, Andrés Segovia and John Williams. He spent his journeyman years, however, among the peasants of a rural Spanish village. This part of Best's musical career was devoted to a simple lifestyle and the music of the folk. In this vein, he began a recording career with a wide variety of vocal and instrumental albums ranging across centuries (English popular music from Shakespeare to the twentieth century) and across linguistic groups (English, Spanish, French, and Provençal). Yet in 1981, Best narrowed his specialty to the European troubadour traditions, what he had once called his "first love." At this time, he formed the Martin Best Medieval Ensemble.

In the 1980s, the Martin Best Medieval Ensemble (and the Martin Best Consort) took England's early music scene by storm. They released a popular series of recordings, each an acoustically fresh read on a group of poets and composers: Guiraut Riquier, Bernart de Ventadorn, Italian and southern French contemporaries of Dante, other Troubadors and Trouvéres, the Lamento di Tristan, and the Cantigas de Santa Maria. Simultaneously, the ensemble presented a series of medieval concert programs for the BBC, and debuts in Britain's most prestigious concert venues: Wigmore Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and the Proms. Their recordings principally appear on Nimbus records. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.