News
Welcome to the new-look Orlando Consort website. It’s a time for many changes (see below) and please bear with us while we get everything loaded onto the new site.
First of all, we need to say a very big thank you to Raphael Biran, our previous designer and host, who has spent many long hours on the old site for the dubious distinction of hanging out with us over a beer or two when we’ve been in New York. He’s a good friend to us all and we much appreciate his hard work. For many reasons – not least because he deserves a break from it all – we’ve decided to change the look of the site and also give ourselves a more hands-on relationship.
 The second major change is the retirement of Robert Harre-Jones from the ranks. Again, years of faithful service (very nearly twenty!) have come to an end and he is diverting his considerable energies and talents into new activities. Doubtless he will still appear with the group in the future and, of course, his glorious voice and musicality can be heard on all the Orlando Consort CDs.
Thirdly, we have a new replacement, the talented, young counter-tenor Matthew Venner. We’ll allow him to make his own introduction in the form of interviews and biography and doubtless you’ll be hearing more of him in the near future.
Scattered Rhymes in Holland
 We have performed Scattered Rhymes with several choirs throughout the United Kingdom in the past two years (see below) but recently we much enjoyed our first collaboration with a choir from outside of our shores, the first of many we hope. We were delighted to be joined by the Laurenscantorij from Rotterdam  under their director Wiecher Mandemaker for a concert on April 26th in the St Laurens Church, Rotterdam and most grateful to Neil Wallace and his team at De Doelen who organised the concert. In addition to the highlight of the evening, Tarik O'Regan's Scattered Rhymes, it should be noted that there was a stunning interpretation of James MacMillan's Come In.
New Album
The Orlando Consort combines forces with the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under Paul Hillier to bring you the latest CD release. It is an interleaved programme of ancient and modern which contrasts the music of Guillaume de Machaut and Guillaume Dufay with modern composers like Tarik O'Regan and Gavin Bryars.
Machaut’s extraordinary Messe de Nostre Dame was not only the first complete mass setting in history, but also the first whose composer can be identified, making it emblematic of the Ars Nova style of the 14th century. In this recording, the Orlando Consort performs the mass in parallel with a work by Tarik O’Regan (born in 1978) which was inspired by it. Scattered Rhymes links two texts from the same period as Machaut’s mass, one by Petrarch, the other an anonymous English poem. Both of them subtly combine earthly and divine love, while the music blends polyphonic tradition and contemporary inspiration.
"..we couldn't ask for better interpreters: the Orlando Consort and Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir have long experience in performing the most challenging music, from the most obscure early manuscripts to recently commissioned works."
of the Machaut Mass: "[the] Orlando Consort bring vibrant energy and ear-pleasing resonance to this ancient, unusual masterpiece"
"I'll end by urging anyone interested in a consistently engaging, musically challenging, and aesthetically rewarding experience to delay no longer: get this disc!" Classics Today.com
David Vernier
Machaut/O'Regan project
The World Premiere of Tarik O'Regan's Scattered Rhymes, a commission for the Spitalfields Festival, received a review which might well be described as a 'rave'. Subsequent performances at
Cheltenham, Brighton, Keele, Manchester, Bristol, Southampton, Bradford-upon-Avon, Nottingham Newcastle and Durham have all been well-received.
For reviews and personal responses go here.
The Arts Council funded tour took place throughout England in 2006 and 2007. It was for a long time our intention to perform the Messe de Nostre Dame by Guillaume de Machaut. This Mass has been recognised as one of the milestones (or perhaps it should be ‘kilometrestones’) of western musical history: it was the first time a composer linked the various liturgical sections of the Mass (Kyrie, Gloria, etc.) musically, thus paving the way for the unified Mass cycles of Dufay, Ockeghem, Josquin, Palestrina and many, many others beyond.
Leaving history and music theory aside, though, it is also an absolutely stunning piece both to hear and to perform.
Our aim was to present the Mass in a form that both evokes the spirit of the 14th century and demonstrate how fresh the music sounds even today. As an aid to achieving the first target, the performances included a selection of the plainchant that would have been included in a typical church service of the time. And, as a corollary to our second objective, we feel very privileged to have the opportunity to present the world première of Scattered Rhymes by the exceptionally gifted young British composer Tarik O’Regan.
Tarik’s new piece was created specifically as a companion work to the Machaut Mass. The dual texts are taken from writings by contemporaries of Machaut: an anonymous English poet and the great Italian poet Petrarch. Tarik has written that, musically, Scattered Rhymes is built up entirely from tiny fragments found in the Machaut Mass, notably “peculiarly rich ‘scrunches’ and false relations mixed with open fifths, fourths and syncopated plainchant-like motifs”.
The work is scored for the Consort plus SATB choir and we were delighted that our tour provided us with an opportunity to work with distinguished amateur choirs throughout England. We are very grateful that these choirs assisted us in concert by performing the plainchant sections that frame the Mass.
See the Concerts page for a full list of concerts, participating choirs and venues. We would also like to extend our thanks and appreciation to those who made the tour possible. The Spitalfields Festival provided the initial impetus and backed it up superbly by commissioning Tarik’s new piece. The Arts Council have very kindly lined up essential financial backing for the tour. And Mumm Cordon Rouge Champagne has magnificently agreed to support the poetry competition through a generous supply of their product to be offered as prizes!
Scattered Rhymes and the Machaut Mass will be the main offerings on a forthcoming recording with Harmonia Mundi USA, the choir for this project being the stunning Estonian Chamber Choir under their redoubtable director, Paul Hillier.
The result of the The Orlando Consort Poetry Competition, sponsored by Mumm Cordon Rouge Champagne.
We are delighted to announce the winners of The Orlando Consort Poetry Competition, sponsored by Mumm Cordon Rouge Champagne. They are:
- VIRELAI: Peter Wyton for 'Khatun Riding By'
- BALLADE: Christopher Thomson for 'Standstill'
- RONDEAU: Stella Cowmeadow for 'Rondeau' ('Though all my friends could clearly see')
- Peter, Christopher and Stella will each receive 6 bottles of champagne and their winning poems can be viewed here.
We would like to offer our thanks to all poets who submitted entries for the competition. Judging was a thoroughly enjoyable process, although it was extremely hard to select the eventual winners from a large number of wonderful poems.
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