BBC Radio 3 features The Sixteen in the current
Discovering Music programme, unravelling some of the works in our Choral Pilgrimage programme. Catherine Bott explores some of the joys of English polyphony with Harry Christophers, Sally Dunkley and The Sixteen in an exploration of music by Byrd, Tallis and Sheppard. The programme was recorded at the National Centre for Early Music in York as part of the 2010 York Early Music Festival and unpicks some of the working and ideas behind three contrasting masterpieces from 16th century English chuch music. William Byrd's "Infelix Ego" is a meditation on Psalm 50 written by the Italian friar Girolamo Savonarola shortly before his execution for heresy.
Thomas Tallis's short but intensely expressive "Miserere Nostri" is an intricate web of musical games and devices around the words "have mercy on us lord, have mercy on us".
Finally John Sheppard's "Media Vita" is a setting of plainsong and text based around the Nunc Dimittis, the traditional song for evening prayer, composed by Sheppard on an uniquely grand scale.
Harry Christophers, the director of The Sixteen, and Sally Dunkley who sings with the group and prepares many of The Sixteen's editions, discuss and illustrate with Catherine Bott some of musical thinking behind these pieces.
Listen here (until 3 October).
Our Sacred Music programme on Allegri's Miserere is being shown again on BBC 4 tonight at 8.30pm. Presented by Simon Russell Beale, it features a complete performance of the work. Harry Christophers conducts and Andy Robbins directs.
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!
Two more concerts at the Spitalfields Festival tonight: pure Monteverdi at 6.30pm (sold out) and then at 8.30pm our Monteverdi collaboration with jazz pianist Julian Joseph, who has also established himself as a jazz pioneer in the classical world. He was the first jazz musician to be invited to give a series of all-acoustic concerts at London's most prestigious classical venue, the Wigmore Hall. He has recorded duets by Milhaud, Stravinsky and Poulenc with Brazilian pianist Marcelo Bratke, combining them with his own arrangements of music by Duke Ellington, Chick Corea and Bill Evans, and collaborated with concert violinist Viktoria Mullova on her fusion project, 'Through the Looking Glass'. As a soloist, he has given recitals of Bartók and Prokofiev sonatas and performed Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F and the Rhapsody in Blue with some of the most renowned symphony orchestras in Europe. At the same time, Julian's own classically-oriented work never ventures too far away from his jazz focus. This is particularly evident in his writing for big band and strings or full symphony orchestra, in which he demonstrates an exceptional ability to orchestrate complex textures of rhythm and sound without losing the essential groove that is at the heart of jazz.
