Vocal ensemble Tallis Scholars, art director Peter Phillips

INTRADA vocal band, art director Ekaterina Antonenko

“Angliyskiye Cornety i Sacbuty” (“English Cornets and Sacbuts”) ensemble 

“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. Individual character comes through in the occasional solo lines, but in longer held chords the tone is so resonant as to make the air vibrate”, The Guardian.

“It all seems so effortless, like squeezing toothpaste from a tube. Out come the sounds from the mouths of the Tallis Scholars: even, pure, a never-ending flow of Renaissance polyphony”, The Times.

Founded by their director, Peter Phillips, in 1973, the Tallis Scholars still ride high among small vocal ensembles – lithe, pure-sounding and vigorous as ever in performance of Renaissance polyphony.

“I got the polyphony bug when an undergraduate at Oxford in 1973. An ideal choral sound got fixed in my head at that time, and I've spent all the years since then trying to recapture it. Hence the Tallis Scholars”, Peter Phillips chuckles.

The purest, – ethereal, as mass media dubs it – sound has become the trademark of The Tallis Scholars, the ensemble that has more than 2 200 concerts under its belt, and more than 60 albums in its discography. Gramophone Award, Diapason d’Or de l’Année are among the prestigious prizes won by the ensemble. The Tallis Scholars albums got Grammy nominations three times.

Phillips’s band introduced many a forgotten Renaissance conposers – e.g. Obrecht, Ockeghem, Cardozo, Clemens Non Papa, etc – to the wider audience.

The Tallis Scholars’ set-list of the concert at “Zaryadye” includes some emblematic pieces of Orlande de Lassus, Palestrina, Andrea Gabrieli, and Giovanni Gabrieli.

Russian collectives INTRADA (which has strong creative bonds with the Scholars) and “Angliyskiye Cornety i Sacbuty” (“English Cornets and Sacbuts”) take part in the concert.