The mesmerizing Tallis Scholars at Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre

BBC Radio 3 has called them “one of the UK’s greatest cultural exports”, and this Monday evening, December 9th, the Tallis Scholars return to Ottawa as part of the 2019-2020 Chamberfest Concert Series. The 10-voice Scholars have been performing the sacred works of the Renaissance for audiences around the world for more than four decades. Their award-winning catalogue for the Gimell label under founding director Peter Phillips has served to bring this arcane repertoire to a wider and very appreciative classical music audience. Phillips’ mesmeric style had The Observer remark, “hands opening as if setting free a dove, or closing to punctuate with dotting-the-i’s exactitude. I found myself wishing I could get a choir’s-eye view to witness Phillips’ complete – lifelong – inhabiting of this music." 

Chamberfest devotees can look forward to the Tallis Scholars biannual winter performance and a program in which the celebrated Scholars of a capella early music will expand their parameters this December 9th. The new programme Reflections has music director Peter Phillips drawing inspiration from the similar and contrasting ways “composers who were poles apart in time and place may react to the same words.” Phillips, who celebrated 45 years at the helm last year, offers a programme ranging from Renaissance masters Tallis, Allegri and Victoria to twentieth-century French composers Olivier Messiaen and Francis Poulenc.

A very few tickets are available for purchase online at chamberfest.com, by phone at 613-234-6306, or in person at 4 Florence St., Suite 201.

When: Mon. Dec. 9, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre, 355 Cooper Street (O’Connor and Cooper)