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Founded in Oslo, Norway in 1997, Trio Mediaeval forged a specialist niche singing sacred monophonic and mediaeval polyphonic music from England, Italy and France but, signed to the ECM label, they quickly developed this specialist genre to fuse it with more modern attitudes and styles. "We approach mediaeval music as if it were written today," said founder member Anna Maria Friman, "mediaeval and contemporary pieces seem to fit incredibly well together." It was a formula which gave them great popularity all over the world, with a string of albums beginning with 'Words of the Angel' (2001) and continuing with 'Soir, dit Elle' (2004), 'Stella Maris' (2005), 'Folk Songs' (2007), 'A Worcester Ladymass' (2011), 'Aquilonis' (2014) and 'Rimur' (2017). Their most acclaimed work was 'Folk Songs' which explored Norway's folk heritage and was even nominated for a Grammy Award. Initially performing traditional Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic songs, they graduated to contemporary works written especially for them by a variety of writers from other fields such as Gavin Bryars, William Brooks, Ivan Moody, Sungji Hong, Oleh Harkavyy, Bjørn Kruse, Trygve Seim and Andrew Smith, among others. They also adapted along the way, adding Norwegian percussionist Birger Mistereggen, while they were also joined by Berit Opheim. They have long established themselves as a unique presence in music and were lauded by American critic Joshua Kosman with the accolade "To hear the group's note-perfect counterpoint is to be astonished at what the human voice is capable of..."
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