Celebrating their 50th anniversary this season, the peerless Tallis Scholars are at the very height of their powers, winning both the Recording of the Year and the Choral Award in BBC Music Magazine last year, and taking home the 2021 Gramophone Music Award in Early Music. These Berkeley favorites are master performers of sacred Renaissance choral music, and here lend their crystalline clarity and pinpoint precision to an exciting program of works that includes Tallis’ monumental Suscipe quaeso, Byrd’s masterful Tribue domine, and contemporary works by Nico Muhly and Arvo Pärt.

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Tallis Scholars

First Congregational Church

In an imaginative program that builds a bridge between the 15th and 21st centuries, the superlative Tallis Scholars pair a masterwork of Renaissance polyphony with a new composition by composer David Lang.   Antoine Brumel’s colossal Earthquake Mass, scored for 12 voices, is a marvel in its imagination and scale, the intricate, dense music coming alive through the clarity, precision, and purity of tone that has been the hallmark of this ensemble’s performances for decades.   Lang, who is co-founder and co-artistic director of the groundbreaking new-music collective Bang on a Can, has composed dozens of award-winning works for choir and voice, from chamber works to oratorios to opera—and received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for another a cappella work, The Little Match Girl Passion. His sun-centered is a response to Brumel’s mass, inspired by Galileo’s pursuit of truth, the relentless nature of human curiosity, and the perils of suppressing it.   “The sound Phillips draws from the Scholars manages to be ethereal and yet full-blooded, uplifting and yet grounded in the very human emotions the words express” (The Guardian).

Peter Phillips

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Apr 27, 2023

Tallis Scholars · Cal Performances

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