The Sixteen are a United Kingdom-based choir and period instrument orchestra; founded by

Harry Christophers Richard Henry Tudor "Harry" Christophers CBE FRSCM (born 26 December 1953) is an English conductor. Life and career Richard Henry Tudor Christophers was born in Goudhurst, Kent. He was a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral under choirmaster Al ...

, they started as an unnamed group of sixteen friends in 1977, giving their first billed concert in 1979. The group performs early English polyphony, works of the Renaissance, Baroque and early Classical music, and a diversity of 20th-century music. The Sixteen are "The Voices of Classic FM", TV media partner with Sky Arts and associate artists of the

Southbank Centre Southbank Centre is a complex of artistic venues in London, England, on the South Bank of the River Thames (between Hungerford Bridge and Waterloo Bridge). It comprises three main performance venues (the Royal Festival Hall including the Nati ...

in London and

Bridgewater Hall The Bridgewater Hall is a concert venue in Manchester city centre, England. It cost around £42 million to build in the 1990s, and hosts over 250 performances a year. It is home to the 165-year-old Hallé Orchestra as well as to the Hallé ...

in Manchester. The group promotes an annual series at the

Queen Elizabeth Hall The Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) is a music venue on the South Bank in London, England, that hosts classical, jazz, and avant-garde music, talks and dance performances. It was opened in 1967, with a concert conducted by Benjamin Britten. The Q ...

as well as the Choral Pilgrimage, a tour of Britain's finest cathedrals: bringing music back to the buildings for which it was written. The BBC television series ''Sacred Music'' was produced in collaboration with The Sixteen; between 2008 and 2015, two full series aired, along with numerous specials.

Tours

The Sixteen tour throughout Europe, Japan, Australia and the Americas and have given regular performances at major concert halls and festivals worldwide, including the

Barbican Centre The Barbican Centre is a performing arts centre in the Barbican Estate of the City of London and the largest of its kind in Europe. The centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhib ...

in London, the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the

Sydney Opera House The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in Sydney. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and distinctive buildings and a masterpiece of 20th-century architec ...

Tokyo Opera City is a skyscraper located in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. Completed in 1996, it stands 234 metres (768 feet) high and has 54 floors. The tower is the third-tallest building in Shinjuku, Tokyo and seventh-tallest in Tokyo. The closest train statio ...

and the

Vienna Musikverein The ( or ; ), commonly shortened to , is a concert hall in Vienna, Austria, which is located in the Innere Stadt district. The building opened in 1870 and is the home of the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. The acoustics of the building's 'Gre ...

. They have also performed at the

BBC Proms The BBC Proms or Proms, formally named the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hal ...

and the festivals of Granada, Lucerne, Istanbul, Prague and Salzburg. In addition, the Sixteen's period orchestra have taken part in semi-staged performances of Purcell's ''

Fairy Queen In folklore and literature, the Fairy Queen or Queen of the Fairies is a female ruler of the fairies, sometimes but not always paired with a king. Depending on the work, she may be named or unnamed; Titania and Mab are two frequently used name ...

'' in Tel Aviv and London, a fully staged production of Purcell's ''

King Arthur King Arthur ( cy, Brenin Arthur, kw, Arthur Gernow, br, Roue Arzhur) is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain. In the earliest traditions, Arthur appears as ...

'' in Lisbon's Centro Cultural de Belém , followed by new productions of

Claudio Monteverdi Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (baptized 15 May 1567 – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, choirmaster and string player. A composer of both secular and sacred music, and a pioneer in the development of opera, he is consider ...

's''

Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria ''Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria'' ( SV 325, ''The Return of Ulysses to his Homeland'') is an opera consisting of a prologue and five acts (later revised to three), set by Claudio Monteverdi to a libretto by Giacomo Badoaro. The opera was first p ...

'' at Lisbon Opera House and ''

The Coronation of Poppea ''L'incoronazione di Poppea'' ( SV 308, ''The Coronation of Poppaea'') is an Italian opera by Claudio Monteverdi. It was Monteverdi's last opera, with a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, and was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni ...

'' at the

English National Opera English National Opera (ENO) is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with The Royal Opera. ENO's productions are sung in English ...

Education

The Sixteen have an education programme and recent projects include a series of school matinées for hundreds of primary school children in

Bury St Edmunds Bury St Edmunds (), commonly referred to locally as Bury, is a historic market, cathedral town and civil parish in Suffolk, England.OS Explorer map 211: Bury St.Edmunds and Stowmarket Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton ...

, Liverpool and Southwell under the national

Sing Up Sing Up is a music education organisation in England that provides schools and teachers with online resources for singing and music-making activities. Its headquarters are located in Gateshead. History In 2007, the then Department for Educati ...

initiative. The Sixteen also have close ties with the

Guildhall School of Music and Drama The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is a conservatoire and drama school located in the City of London, United Kingdom. Established in 1880, the school offers undergraduate and postgraduate training in all aspects of classical music and jazz ...

and

Trinity College of Music Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance is a music and dance conservatoire based in London, England. It was formed in 2005 as a merger of two older institutions – Trinity College of Music and Laban Dance Centre. The conservatoire has ...

, offering opportunities for young people about to embark on careers as professional musicians.

Discography

Over 90 recordings reflect the Sixteen's range of work, spanning the music of 500 years and winning many awards including the ''Grand Prix du Disque'', numerous ''Schallplattenkritik'', a

Gramophone Award The Gramophone Classical Music Awards, launched in 1977, are one of the most significant honours bestowed on recordings in the classical record industry. They are often viewed as equivalent to or surpassing the American Grammy award, and refe ...

(Early Music, 1992), the Classical Brit Award in 2005 for Renaissance and IKON, which was nominated for a Grammy Award and two Classical Brits. These latter two discs were recorded as part of the group's contract with Universal Classics and Jazz. Since 2001, the Sixteen have had their own record label, CORO, which has released over 90 titles to date. Recent recordings include Handel's oratorio ''Messiah'', with soloists

Carolyn Sampson Carolyn Sampson (born 18 May 1974) is an English soprano in opera and concert. Specialising in historically informed performance, she has sung in Masaaki Suzuki's recording project of Bach cantatas and has appeared at the English National Opera. ...

Catherine Wyn-Rogers Katherine, also spelled Catherine, and other variations are feminine names. They are popular in Christian countries because of their derivation from the name of one of the first Christian saints, Catherine of Alexandria. In the early Chris ...

, Mark Padmore and

Christopher Purves Christopher Purves (born in Cambridge) is an English bass-baritone.''Opera'' (2009), vol. 60, p. 516, "Christopher Purves. Erica Jeal. Purves sings his first Falstaff at Glyndebourne this month Before I get to talk with ... Home was Cambridge, whe ...

(winner of a MIDEM Classical Award 2009), ''Dixit Dominus'' featuring

Handel George Frideric (or Frederick) Handel (; baptised , ; 23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) was a German-British Baroque composer well known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concertos. Handel received his training i ...

's eponymous early work and Steffani's Stabat Mater, ''Ceremony and Devotion: Music for the Tudors'', which accompanied the 2010 Choral Pilgrimage and ''Hail, Mother of the Redeemer'', which accompanied the 2011 Choral Pilgrimage.

References

External links

Official websiteThe Voices of Classic FMHarry Christophers interview with Paris Konstantinidis
(2007) {{DEFAULTSORT:Sixteen, The Early music choirs English choirs British early music ensembles Musical groups established in 1979

Tours

Education

Discography

See also

References

External links