For Nico Muhly’s Composer-in-Focus season, The Tallis Scholars trace a musical conversation across five centuries, pairing Phinot, Palestrina and Sheppard with three works written especially for the ensemble over more than a decade of collaboration.

Written with The Tallis Scholars’ distinctive sound in mind, Muhly’s No Resting Place, Recordare and A Glorious Creature combine contemporary musical language with a deep understanding of Renaissance polyphony, preserving the clarity, balance and luminous sonority for which the ensemble is renowned.

Alongside Muhly’s music, The Tallis Scholars perform three of their most cherished Renaissance works by Phinot, Palestrina and Sheppard. These pairings reveal shared texts, themes and musical influences: Phinot and Palestrina echo ideas found in No Resting Place and Recordare, while Sheppard’s rich sound world and soaring soprano lines offer a fascinating precursor to Muhly’s writing.

Together, these works illuminate the creative relationship between past and present, revealing how music separated by five centuries can speak to one another with remarkable freshness and immediacy.

This event will last approximately 80 minutes including an interval. 

About The Tallis Scholars

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 the purity and clarity of sound which he feels best serves the Renaissance repertoire. It is the resulting beauty of sound for which The Tallis Scholars have become so widely renowned.

Recordings by The Tallis Scholars have attracted many awards throughout the world. The 2020 release including Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie was the last of nine albums in The Tallis Scholars’ project to record and release all Josquin’s masses before the 500th anniversary of the composer’s death. It was the winner of BBC Music Magazine’s much-coveted Recording of the Year Award in 2021 and the 2021 Gramophone Early Music Award. Their Gimell release in November 2024 featured music by Robert Fayrfax and was made Editor’s Choice in Gramophone. 2026 sees the release of their first recording on Linn Records, which showcases a body of work written for the group by US composer Nico Muhly. The disc has received great acclaim, including being selected as Gramophone magazine’s Editor’s Choice for April 2026.

Peter Phillips has dedicated his career to the research and performance of Renaissance polyphony, and to the perfecting of choral sound. He founded The Tallis Scholars in 1973, with whom he has now appeared in over 2,500 concerts worldwide, and made over 60 discs in association with Gimell Records. As a result of this commitment, Peter Phillips and The Tallis Scholars have done more than any other group to establish the sacred vocal music of the Renaissance as one of the great repertoires of Western classical music.

Reviews:

‘Peter Phillips and his ensemble long ago secured their place in the top echelon of professional, early music choral groups.’ Richard Fairman, Financial Times

‘With the interpretative approach of a true vocal ensemble, in which every individual line is both distinct and complementary, The Tallis Scholars adapt with remarkable mastery to Nico Muhly’s contemporary yet never excessively radical musical language.’ Scherzo Magazine

‘The Tallis Scholars sing magnificently: precise, alert and expressive. Their refusal to over-blend the sound helps bring out the emotional impact of Muhly’s writing.’ BBC Music Magazine