The Tallis Scholars

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The Tallis Scholars were founded in 1973 by their director, Peter Phillips. Through their recordings and concert performances, they have established themselves as the leading exponents of Renaissance sacred music throughout the world. Peter Phillips has worked with the ensemble to create, through good tuning and blend, the purity and clarity of sound which he feels best serve the Renaissance repertoire, allowing every detail of the musical lines to be heard. It is the resulting beauty of sound for which The Tallis Scholars have become so widely renowned.
MEDIA / VIDEO
ACCLAIM / TESTIMONIALS
"Under their founder and director, Peter Phillips, these 10 singers displayed the floating silkiness, light without seeming insubstantial, that has been Tallis’s trademark over its remarkable career."
New York Times
"Nearly 50 years on, the sound remains the same, and though 'Scholars' have come and gone, Phillips is as committed to his 16-member ensemble and the music as ever.... The performance conveyed an overwhelming sense of peace, its stately progress rich in harmonic invention with the occasional scrunchy chord for added spice. The 14 singers here made a sumptuous sound with bright, clean sopranos floating above an ensemble notable for its seamless blend."
Musical America
"On the cusp of their 50th anniversary, Peter Phillips and his ensemble long ago secured their place in the top echelon of professional, early music choral groups."
Financial Times
“The rock stars of Renaissance vocal music.”
New York Times
“One of the UK's greatest cultural exports.”
BBC Radio 3
"As one of the most important accounts of Josquin’s Masses in recent decades, Peter Phillips’s albums with The Tallis Scholars continue to sparkle and inform. Already in these pages I have admired the clarity of vision and consistency of sound that this ensemble bring to his works; but with this new album there is a particular sheen to the performance that places it among their recent best."
Gramophone
"The Tallis Scholars under Peter Phillips gave a typically refined concert of their core repertoire: Tallis, Sheppard, Victoria, with a dash of Britten and Pärt. The singing offered – even to this atheist – a glimpse of heaven, generating a physical pleasure in the act of listening."
The Arts Desk
"The Tallis Scholars’ enunciation of the text of both masses is characteristically precise and clear.... Long vocal lines are effortlessly spun, and individual parts come together to form strikingly plush bodies of sound."
Opera Now
"The Tallis Scholars ... are one of the world’s premier vocal ensembles."
Washington Post
"The Tallis Scholars have been at the top of their profession since the group was founded in 1973, and the ten artists who visited Cleveland this month continue their long tradition of perfectly blended, tonally focused, wonderfully tuned singing."
Cleveland Classical
“The sound coming from the Tallis Scholars almost surpassed the humanly possible”
The Telegraph
DISCOGRAPHY

Live in Venice

Released: September 25, 2026
Label: ECM
Composer: Monteverdi, Palestrina, Lotti, Allegri, Komitas, Pärt

No Resting Place

Released: March 13, 2026
Label: Linn Records
Composer: Nico Muhly

Robert Fayrfax - Maria plena virtute

Released: November 1, 2024
Label: Gimell Records
Composers: Robert Fayrfax

Josquin: Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie - Missa D'ung aultre amer - Missa Faysant regretz

Released: November 1, 2020
Label: Gimell Records
Composers: Josquin des Prez

Josquin: Missa Mater Patris - Bauldeweyn: Missa Da pacem

Released: November 1, 2019
Label: Gimell Records
Composers: Josquin, Bauldeweyn

Josquin: Missa Gaudeamus and Missa L'ami Baudichon

Released: October 16, 2018
Label: Gimell Records
Composer: Josquin des Prez

Josquin: Missa Di dadi and Missa Une mousse de Biscaye

Released: October 28, 2016
Label: Gimell Records
Composer: Josquin des Prez

Taverner: Missa Corona spinea

Released: November 13, 2015
Label: Gimell Records
Composer: John Taverner

Perfect Polyphony

Released: August 28, 2015
Label: Gimell Records

Tintinnabuli

Released: March 10, 2015
Label: Gimell Records
Composer: Arvo Pärt

The Tallis Scholars sing Thomas Tallis

Released: September, 2004
Label: Gimell Records
Composer: Thomas Tallis

NEWS / PRESS
GALLERY / IMAGES
PROGRAMS / PROJECTS

Mother and Child

Available: December 2-16, 2025
The theme behind this seasonal program is the Virgin Mary, whether celebrating her own divinity (in the Votive Mass written by Byrd), or in the context of the birth of Christ (in Tallis's epic Missa Puer natus). The choice of music is taken exclusively from the English repertoire, featuring not only renaissance masterpieces but also compositions by Britten and Matthew Martin.

Mysteries and Miracles

Available: April 9-26, 2026
This program consists entirely of music which was inspired by a miraculous event in the life of Jesus, as set by a host of differing composers. The texts tell their own story. Victoria's Missa O magnum mysterium is based on his motet of the same name, in which Christ's miraculous birth is described, with the animals looking on. In the two De Wert motets which follow, Egressus Jesus tells the story of Christ curing a girl who is possessed of a demon, while Ascendente Jesu illustrates in music (rather graphically) how Christ calmed the waves of the sea in the midst of a raging storm.

Hail Mary

Available: December 1-20, 2026
Each piece on this program was written in praise of the Virgin Mary, most famously the Ave Maria and Salve regina. Less often set is Gaude gloriosa (Rejoice, O Glorious Mother of God), which is present here as the third panel in a triptych of Marian antiphons commissioned from Matthew Martin. The program begins and end with festal settings of the Magnificat, Mary's universal message of hope, the first in Latin, the second in German.

Slings and arrows …

Available: March 30 – April 18, 2027
"Desperate fate, who blackened the good name of a woman beyond compare" sings the composer, possibly Antoine Busnois, of the secular model for Josquin's epic masssetting. This mass, which is distributed through the program, is one of Josquin's ultimate masterpieces, endlessly inventing new ideas from the original material. In between are Mouton, Lambe, and Nicolas Gombert.

Rejoice!

Available: November 29 – December 14, 2027
The words and traditional melody of 'Gaudeamus' underlie much of this program. The first six notes of the Gregorian melody, sung solo at the beginning are quoted as an ostinato throughout Morales' Jubilate deo, as well as in every movement of Victoria's mass. The rest of the program explores settings of texts in praise of the Virgin Mary, While Bruckner and Poulenc occupy later sound-worlds than Josquin's, the message of worship is very similar.

Stabat mater

Available: April 18 – May 7, 2028
Much of this program is made up of paired settings of the same texts, from widely contrasting backgrounds. The most striking of these are the eponymous Stabat maters by Josquin and Palestrina – recognized masterpieces from the moment they were written, but nonetheless from very different traditions.

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