The Sixteen

United kingdom conductor Harry Christophers (given birth to 1953) founded the choral ensemble named The 16 in 1977. The director’s eyesight through the outset foresaw the musical repertories that they would become best-known: early British polyphony, additional repertories from the Western Renaissance, aswell as choral functions from the twentieth hundred years. Even the decision of naming the ensemble not really after a specific composer, design, or period offered this objective of musical versatility. With over 70 acclaimed recordings in its 1st 2 decades and a touring plan which has brought the group to “churches from Finland to Sicily,” opera homes from London to Sydney, and celebrations from Salzburg to Tokyo, The Sixteen has generated itself among the most flexible and refined choirs from the turn from the hundred years. The 1992 documenting The Rose as well as the Ostrich Feather: Music Through the Eton Choirbook, Vol. I gained the group a Grammy honor for Early Music; additional recordings have already been granted several Grand Prix du Disque, Deutsche Schallplatten, Grammophone Early Music, and Diapason d’Or awards. In 1991, the group sang in the globe premiere of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s opera Gawain in Covent Backyard; in 1998 a Lisbon Opera debut of Claudio Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria; the entire year 2000 noticed a “Pilgrimage” tour of British cathedrals. The Sixteen sings with an “Oxbridge” purity of intonation (Christophers himself started his musical profession as mind chorister at Canterbury Cathedral) coupled with a passionate however controlled powerful range. The groupings tonal virtuosity embraces the directness of Tudor and Elizabethan choirboy performing (regardless of the mature mix of feminine sopranos and male altos), however expands to a far more intimate fullness for Spanish and Portugese Renaissance music or for Benjamin Britten and Samuel Barber. The ensemble added an orchestral component (initial known as the Orchestra from the Sixteen and afterwards the Symphony of Tranquility and Invention) to broaden its repertory into Baroque; both groupings collaborated on some operas of Monteverdi, operas of Purcell, many oratorios of Handel, and main functions of J.S. Bach. The group founced its record label, CORO, in 2001, and released over 90 albums in its initial two decades. In ’09 2009, Common Grammophone FM called The Sixteen “Musician of the entire year.”