This April, Carnegie Hall presents the preeminent a cappella vocal ensemble The Tallis Scholars in two events as part of its month-long Before Bach focus. From April 13 to 17, the group and its director Peter Phillips lead a workshop for 37 pre-professional singers presented by Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute on choral masterworks of the Renaissance. Over five days, Mr. Phillips and members of The Tallis Scholars prepare the singers to join them in a program to include a composite mass setting drawn from Antoine Brumel's dramatic Missa Et ecce terrae motus (the "Earthquake" Mass) with Tomás Luis de Victoria's Missa Salve regina, and concluding with Thomas Tallis's sonorous 40-part motet "Spem in alium," recently featured in the book and film adaptation of E.L. James's best-selling novel Fifty Shades of Grey. The workshop culminates with a performance by The Tallis Scholars and the workshop participants on Friday, April 17 at 8:00 p.m. at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola. The program also features works by Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Weelkes, Robert Cowper, and John Sheppard.
Mr. Phillips and The Tallis Scholars return to
Carnegie Hall on
Saturday, April 18 at 7:30 p.m. in Weill Recital Hall for a performance of Franco-Flemish and English Renaissance sacred music by Josquin des Préz and William Byrd. Both concerts are presented by
Carnegie Hall as part of a month-long Before Bach focus, which explores a wealth of music written before 1685-the birth year of both Bach and Handel-as performed by some of the top early music groups of today.
About the Artists
The Tallis Scholars were founded in 1973 by their director,
Peter Phillips. Through their recordings and concert performances, they have established themselves as the leading exponents of Renaissance sacred music throughout the world. Phillips has worked with the ensemble to create, through good tuning and blend, the purity and clarity of sound which he feels best serve the Renaissance repertoire, allowing every detail of the musical lines to be heard. It is the resulting beauty of sound for which The Tallis Scholars have become so widely renowned.
The Tallis Scholars perform in both sacred and secular venues, giving around 70 concerts each year across the globe. Their career highlights have included a tour of China in 1999, including two concerts in Beijing; and the privilege of performing in the Sistine Chapel in April 1994 to mark the final stage of the complete restoration of the Michelangelo frescoes, broadcast simultaneously on Italian and Japanese television. The ensemble have commissioned many contemporary composers during their history: in 1998 they celebrated their 25th Anniversary with a special concert in London's National Gallery, premiering a Sir John Tavener work written for the group and narrated by Sting. A further performance was given with Sir
Paul McCartney in New York in 2000. The Tallis Scholars are broadcast regularly on radio (including performances from the BBC Proms at the Royal
Albert Hall in 2007, 2008, and 2011) and have also been featured on the acclaimed ITV program The South Bank Show.
Recordings by The Tallis Scholars have attracted many awards throughout the world. In 1987, their recording of Josquin's Missa La sol fa re mi and Missa Pange lingua received Gramophone's Record of the Year, the first recording of early music ever to win this coveted award. In 1989, the French magazine Diapason gave two of its critical Diapason d'Or awards for the recordings of a mass and motets by Lassus and for Josquin's two masses based on the chanson L'Homme armé. Their recording of Palestrina's Missa Assumpta est Maria and Missa Sicut lilium was awarded Gramophone's Early Music Award in 1991; they received the 1994 Early Music Award for their recording of music by Cipriano de Rore; and the same distinction again in 2005 for their disc of music by
John Browne. In 2010, they released three 4-CD box sets of The Best of The Tallis Scholars, one for each decade of its history. The Tallis Scholars' ongoing project to record Josquin's complete cycle of masses, when completed, will run to nine discs.
Peter Phillips has made an impressive if unusual reputation for himself in dedicating his life's work to the research and performance of Renaissance polyphony. Having won a scholarship to Oxford in 1972,
Mr. Phillips studied Renaissance music with David Wulstan and Denis Arnold, and gained experience in conducting small vocal ensembles, already experimenting with the rarer parts of the repertoire. He founded The Tallis Scholars in 1973, with who he has now appeared in over 1900 concerts and made over 50 recordings, encouraging interest in polyphony all over the world. As a result of his work, through concerts, recordings, written articles, magazine awards, and publishing editions of the music, Renaissance music has come to be accepted for the first time as part of the mainstream classical repertoire. The Tallis Scholars celebrated their 40th anniversary in 2013 with 99 concerts worldwide.
Apart from The Tallis Scholars,
Mr. Phillips continues to work with other specialist ensembles. He has appeared with the BBC Singers, the Collegium Vocale Ghent, and the Netherlands Chamber Choir, and is currently working with the Choeur de Chambre de Namur, Intrada of Moscow, Musica Reservata of Barcelona, and El Leon de Oro of Oviedo. He gives numerous master classes and choral workshops every year around the world and is also Artistic Director of The Tallis Scholars Summer Schools: annual choral courses based in Uppingham (UK), Seattle (US), and Sydney (Australia), dedicated to exploring the heritage of Renaissance choral music, and developing a performance style appropriate to it as pioneered by The Tallis Scholars. In 2014,
Mr. Phillips launched the London International A Cappella Choir Competition in St. John's Smith Square, attracting choirs from all over the world.
In addition to conducting,
Mr. Phillips is well known as a writer. For 31 years, he has contributed a regular music column (as well as one, more briefly, on cricket) to The Spectator. In 1995, he became the owner and publisher of The Musical Times, the oldest continuously published music journal in the world.
Mr. Phillips's first book, English Sacred Music 1549-1649, was published by Gimell in 1991, while his second, What We Really Do, an unblinking account of what touring is like, alongside insights about the make-up and performance of polyphony, was published in 2003 and again in 2013.
Program Information
Friday, April 17 at 8:00 p.m.
Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, 980 Park Ave.
THE TALLIS SCHOLARS
Carnegie Hall Chamber Chorus
Peter Phillips, Conductor
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