The Tallis Scholars

“Anyone familiar with Renaissance music knows that this group has attained superstardom among its ilk”

The Boston Globe, December 1998

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. Peter 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. In 2008-2009 the group will tour the USA twice including a visit to Mexico, tour Japan, and appear at festivals and venues across the UK and Europe including in their own Choral Series at Cadogan Hall. In July 2009 The Tallis Scholars will team up with the National Centre for Early Music and the BBC in a nation-wide composition competition, designed to encourage young people to write for unaccompanied voices. The winning entry will be part of the concert which will open the 2009 York Festival, alongside Taverner's spectacular Missa Corona spinea.

The Tallis Scholars' 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, now available on DVD. 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 both 2007 and 2008) and have also been featured on the acclaimed ITV programme The Southbank Show.

Much of The Tallis Scholars reputation for their pioneering work has come from their association with Gimell Records, set up by Peter Phillips and Steve Smith in 1981 solely to record the Scholars. In February 1994 Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars performed on the 400th anniversary of the death of Palestrina in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, where Palestrina had trained as a choirboy and later worked as Maestro di Cappella. The concerts were recorded by Gimell and are available on both CD and DVD.

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 magazines Record of the Year award, still the only recording of early music ever to win this coveted award. In 1989 the French magazine DIAPASON gave two of its coveted Diapason d'Or de l'Année awards for recordings of a mass and motets by Lassus and of 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 which was also nominated for a Grammy. Their most recent disc, featuring the music of Josquin, received exceptional reviews and was awarded a further Diapason d'Or.

These accolades are continuing evidence of the exceptionally high standard maintained by the Tallis Scholars, and of their dedication to one of the great repertoires in Western classical music. For the latest opportunities to hear the Tallis Scholars in concert, or for more information on how to purchase CDs or DVDs of the group, please visit the Gimell Records website. Here you will also find details of how to register for free e-newsletters, purchase gift vouchers for items available on the website, and news of forthcoming releases and occasional special offers.

Director: Peter Phillips

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, Peter 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 whom he has now appeared in 1450 concerts and made over 50 discs, encouraging interest in polyphony all over the world. As a result of his work, through concerts, recordings, magazine awards, publishing editions of the music and writing articles, Renaissance music has come to be accepted for the first time as part of the mainstream classical repertoire.

Apart from the Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips continues to work with other specialist ensembles. Amongst others he has appeared with the Collegium Vocale of Ghent, broadcasting live on French radio from the Saintes festival; the Vox Vocal Ensemble of New York; and Musix of Budapest. Peter also works extensively with the BBC Singers with whom he has broadcast live on BBC Radio Three. He gives numerous master-classes and choral workshops every year around the world and is also Artistic Director of the Tallis Scholars Summer School - UK and USA based choral courses dedicated to exploring the heritage of renaissance choral music, and developing a performance style appropriate to it as pioneered by The Tallis Scholars. 2007 marks the first Summer School in Sydney, Australia. Peter has recently been appointed Director of Music at Merton College, Oxford, where he will set up a new Choral Foundation in 2008.

In addition to conducting, Peter Phillips is well-known as a writer. For many years he has contributed a regular music column (as well as one 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. His 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.

Peter Phillips has made numerous television and radio broadcasts. Besides those featuring The Tallis Scholars (which include live broadcasts from the 2001 and 2003 Proms, the Aldeburgh Festival, the Bath Festival and the Cheltenham Festival), he has appeared several times on the BBC's Music Weekly and on the BBC World Service, on Kaleidoscope (Radio 4), on Today (Radio 4) and on German, French, Canadian and North American radio. In 2002 The Tallis Scholars made a special television documentary for the BBC about the life and times of William Byrd.

In 2005, Peter Phillips was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, a decoration intended to honour individuals who have contributed to the understanding of French culture in the world. In 2006, his song-cycle for contralto 'Four Rondeaux by Charles d'Orleans' was premiered in the Guggenheim, New York, to critical acclaim.