CONCERT AND CD RECORDING SUMMER 2025
The choir is delighted to announce that it will be making a recording of Sebastián Vivanco’s Missa de profunctis in July, in collaboration with Toccata Classics.
One of the last composers of Spain’s Golden Age, Vivanco held several prestigious cathedral appointments and became professor of music at the University of Salamanca. His surviving polyphony is superbly crafted, and often a little more adventurous than the music of Victoria, his near contemporary and fellow chorister at Ávila Cathedral.
The quality of Vivanco’s music is at last being recognised and we are thrilled to have this opportunity to add to a growing canon of editions and recordings. We will sing the Requiem mass from a new edition that was recently edited and published by musicologist Jorge Martin.
Elegant, luminous and fluid, this work is little-known and deserves its place alongside other Iberian polyphonic Requiems. This well-crafted piece, to our knowledge, has not previously been recorded on CD. It surely deserves its place alongside other Iberian polyphonic Requiems by composers such as Duarte Lobo, Manuel Cardoso and Victoria.
We will accompany the Requiem with austere funerary motets and rich penitential pieces by Vivanco and his Iberian contemporaries. Some of the motets will also be rarely recorded rarities, altogether representing a serious addition to the canon of Iberian Golden Age
music.
The choir will perform the programme at its Summer Concert in London on Saturday 28 June at The French Protestant Church, Soho Square, before making the recording on 11-13 July. Tickets will be available via this website soon.
Could you support the recording?
Making a recording is an expensive business, the more so since CD sales have been decimated by the onset of streaming services. We have secured about 25% of our budget already but need an additional £5,000 to cover the cost of production and publicity.
If you could help us, please visit our Crowdfunder page to make a donation. We are offering tasty ‘rewards’ to our supporters such as VIP tickets to our summer concert and a special open rehearsal where you can get a preview of this wonderful music and sing along with us.
It has been some time since The Renaissance Singers made a CD. As well furthering our charitable mission to present and promote lesser-known polyphony, it is also a wonderful opportunity for the members of the group. Taking part in a recording enhances singers’ musicianship, vocal skills and contributes enormously to that sense of belonging and collaboration you get from being in a choir.
We also think we’re sounding pretty good as a choir right now, so we’re excited about capturing this particular moment in the Rennie’s history via a professionally produced recording.
Over the coming months we’ll feature more information about the project here but, in the meantime, we hope you can support us!
P a s t P r o j e c t s
Adopt a Composer
2012 - 2013
In the Summer of 2012, the Renaissance Singers were paired with Stef Conner (pictured) as part of the Sound and Music/Making Music/PRSF Adopt a Composer scheme. Over the course of the next year we would collaborate with Stef on a series of new works written for the choir, that were ultimately performed in our The Shrines of Waltham concert in October 2013.
You can find out more about the works Stef composed and the concert at Waltham Abbey from Stef's website.
Striggio: Mass in 40 parts
September 2012
In 2012 we were selected as the local choir to join i Fagiolini for the London performance of Striggio's 40-part motet Ecce beatam lucem and the related mass Ecco sì beato giorno. This series of six concerts across the country was the culmination of i Fagiolini's Striggio project and the premiere performances of this edition of the mass. The London performance took place at St Augustine's, Kilburn and the voices and instruments were spread across both levels of the building, making use of the galleries to give a multi-layered effect.
You can find out more about this project by visiting i Fagiolini's dedicated microsite, where there is a page about the public performances.
Edmund Hooper: The 'Flat' Service
September 2010
With support from the BBC Performing Arts Fund’s Choral Ambition scheme, the Renaissance Singers unearthed a ‘missing’ Evening Service by Edmund Hooper – The ‘Flat’ Service.
The choir’s musical director David Allinson, a specialist in early English church music, has produced the first modern performing edition of the service which was given its premier in the context of a service of Jacobean Choral Evensong on 30 September 2010, accompanied by organist William Whitehead. The performance was preceded by a short talk by David Allinson who gave an insight into the process of reconstructing the work and bringing it back to life.
The Renaissance Singers have recorded The ‘Flat’ Service and other works by Hooper. See our Recordings page for further details. Courtesy of Andrew Gant, you can find a detailed exposition of the life and work of Edmund Hooper, Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, here.