About the Consort
Described by one concert-goer in an eloquent but unsolicited e-mail as “the jewel in the crown of Salisbury music”, the Sarum Consort is celebrating its seventeenth year, having been founded in 1992. It made its concert debut at the 1993 Salisbury Festival when painter Jane Mackay, Andrew's sister, exhibited work inspired by Britten's music, and a concert was given to illustrate the artist's inspiration.
The Consort’s recordings over the last ten years have enjoyed critical acclaim, the Byrd Motets disc being described in the Gramophone as "exhilarating" and in the Penguin Guide as "a first-rate bargain" in which the pacing and control of light and shade "cannot be faulted". The first Peter Philips disc was featured on BBC Radio 3’s Record Review where it was described as "magical", and in BBC Music Magazine where it received a glowing report and the maximum five stars for performance. The Consort’s most recent discs, of music by Vaughan Williams and Philip Moore, and the second disc of Motets by Peter Philips, were released exclusively to Friends and concert goers in February 2004 and April 2005 respectively. The next disc, scheduled to be recorded in July 2009, will be of the music from last year’s programme All the Queen’s Men, in which we will again be working with the celebrated lutenist Jacob Heringman.
The choir celebrated its tenth anniversary by making its London debut in St John’s, Smith Square in October 2002 with Rachmaninov’s Vespers and Philip Moore’s Canticle of Light, commissioned for the occasion. The Church Times reviewer Roderic Dunnett, for whom the Consort ‘proved itself an easy match for almost any London choir’, noted that the conductor ‘marshalled and balanced his well-prepared Sarum forces with sensitivity, shrewdness, and a glorious feel for the dance’.