Magic numbers and some reminders

There is an interesting piece in Tom Service's Guardian blog today on composers and their clandestine codes. Read what he has to say about composers from Bach to John Zorn.

Tonight the Choral Pilgrimage reaches Milton Keynes. The concert is technically sold out but there might be a few returns on the door.

If you are nowhere near Milton Keynes you can hear our Monteverdi concerts from Spitalfields on BBC Radio 3 tonight at 7pm. Petroc Trelawny presents.

Jazz meets Monteverdi on Radio 3

BBC Radio 3 recorded our two Monteverdi concerts at the Spitalfields Festival last night for broadcast on Performance on 3 next Friday 2 July at 7.00pm. Reaction to our collaboration with Julian Joseph was excellent, and there was a stimulating discussion afterwards with members of the audience who wanted to unpick the perennial problem of how jazz musicians 'do jazz' and how you go on to combine its freedom and improvisiation with structured, notated music. What was remarkable was how our continuo section relished the occasion!

'Hello, Harry'

Hotfoot back from Christ Church Spitalfields where, as part of festival residency, The Sixteen has been giving a specially designed introduction to Monteverdi's music to 400+ primary schoolchildren from Tower Hamlets. It is not every audience which greets the conductor with a yell of 'Hello, Harry', and then gets on with singing Monteverdi.

James MacMillan at Spitalfields

Erica Jeal in the Guardian enjoyed the first evening of our residency at the Spitalfields Festival: you can read her review here. Tomorrow night we give the first UK performance of James MacMillan's Miserere. We gave the first performance in Antwerp last August. It is a signficant addition to James' deeply-felt, deeply spiritual series of choral works. The programme includes works by Palestrina and Aenerio, and Allegri's famous setting of Psalm 51, Miserere mei.

Tickets: +44 20 7377 1362.

From Norwich to Spitalfields

Another busy weekend for The Sixteen, with a sold-out Choral Pigrimage concert in Norwich Cathedral on Saturday, and then 17 mini-concerts in Silkweavers' Cottages in Spitalfields yesterday, our first project as Associate Artists at this year's Festival. Four groups of performers played in four houses for four audiences, who walked between the various venues, and then all coming together for a final event, performing pieces from John Dowland's A Pilgrim's Solace. Our next concert at the Festival is on Friday evening and includes the UK premiere of James MacMillan's Miserere.