Stile Antico December 7, 2011

Full details at http://www.ums.org/s_current_season/artist.asp?pageid=670
One of the most talked-about events two years ago was the young British ensemble Stile Antico, which is now firmly established as one of the most original and exciting new groups in the choral music world. The group’s most recent release, Song of Songs, won the 2009 Gramophone Award for Early Music. Working without a conductor, the 12 members of Stile Antico rehearse and perform as chamber musicians, each contributing artistically to the end result. Their performances have been repeatedly praised for their vitality and commitment, expressive lucidity, and imaginative response to text. For this return engagement, Stile Antico moves across town to the beautiful sanctuary of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, where they will perform a program of Tudor music for Christmas and Advent. The program is centered on Thomas Tallis’s magnificent seven-part “Christmas” mass, written for the combined choirs of the Spanish and English Chapels Royal and first performed in December 1554. The mass is interspersed with contemporaneous liturgical settings for Advent and Christmas, from the perfect miniatures of William Byrd’s exquisite Propers for the Fourth Sunday of Advent to Robert White’s exuberant setting of the Magnificat and John Sheppard’s extraordinary Verbum Caro.