Director: Peter Phillips

Soprano: Janet Coxwell, Amy Wood, Alice Gribbin, Emma Walshe

Alto: Patrick Craig, Ruth Massey

Tenor: Christopher Watson, Simon Wall

Bass: Adrian Peacock, Stephen Charlesworth

“The rock stars of Renaissance vocal music”.

New York Times

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 2011 the group will tour the USA twice and appear at festivals and venues across the UK and Europe including in their own Choral Series at Cadogan Hall. The group will also be returning to Japan and future plans include a return visit to Australia. The Tallis Scholars team up with the National Centre for Early Music and the BBC in a bi-annual nation-wide composition competition, designed to encourage young people to write for unaccompanied voices. The winning entries get performed by the Tallis Scholars in a concert recorded and broadcast by BBC Radio 3.

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. 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 1980 solely to record the group. 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'sMissa La sol fa re mi and MissaPange 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 critical Diapason d'Or de l'Année awards for the recordings of a mass and motets by Lassus and for Josquin's two masses based on the chanson L'Hommearmé. Their recording of Palestrina's MissaAssumptaest Maria and MissaSicutlilium 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 Grammy-nominated. Released on the 30th anniversary of Gimell Records in March 2010, the Tallis Scholars' recording of Victoria's Lamentations of Jeremiah received critical acclaim, and to further celebrate the anniversary, the group released three 4 CD box sets of "The Best of the Tallis Scholars", one for each decade. The ongoing project to record Josquin's complete cycle of masses, when completed, will run to 9 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, Peter Phillips studied Renaissance music with David Wulstan and Denis Arnold. He founded the Tallis Scholars in 1973, with whom he has now appeared in over 1600 concerts and made over 50 discs, encouraging interest in polyphony all over the world.

Apart from The Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips continues to work with other specialist ensembles including the BBC Singers, CollegiumVocale of Ghent, the VoxVocal Ensemble of New York, and Musix of Budapest. He has made numerous television and radio appearances, on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service as well as on German, French, Canadian and North American radio.

As well as leading numerous masterclasses and choral workshops every year, Peter Phillips is Artistic Director of the Tallis Scholars Summer Schools – annual choral courses based in Oakham (UK), Seattle (USA) and Sydney (Australia) dedicated to exploring the heritage of renaissance choral music, and developing an appropriate performance style. Peter has recently been appointed Reed Rubin Director of Music at Merton College, Oxford, over-seeing the setting up of a new Choral Foundation.

In 2005 Peter Phillips was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture.