This is the place to find information about Peter Phillips future projects, concerts, recordings and writings. You will find here my calendar for the years 2007 and 2008, a description of the organisations I will work for with contact details where relevant, and some publicity material and photographs which may be downloaded.

While I undertake to keep this site as up-to-date as possible, I cannot guarantee that it is completely current. I will always be pleased to hear from anyone who is interested in what they see here. Since this website is intended only to be a basic information service, it may be necessary to find out further details (like box-office or contact phone numbers) via other websites. Your next port of call might well be one of the following, depending on the topic:

www.gimell.com
www.thetallisscholars.co.uk
www.hazardchase.co.uk
www.musicaltimes.co.uk
www.tsss.uk.com
www.concert-diary.com/tts

All the listed concerts will take place in the evening of the day stated, unless another time is given.

Peter Phillips in rehearsal for the 2007 Proms; photo by Malcolm Crowthers

The 2008/9 season has some big-time anniversaries on display, as well as some new opportunities for us. Purcell was born in 1659 and Handel died in 1759. Vaughan Williams died in 1958. More relevant to renaissance polyphonists perhaps, Jacob Obrecht may have been born in 1458. One notices that none of these anniversaries is a straight hundred; but then many promoters make no distinction between fifties and hundreds anyway. The upshot for the Tallis Scholars has been the invitation to perform in the Promenade Concerts for a second year running: and this time without the paraphernalia of 40 (or 60) with voices with instruments, and guest conductors. No, this time it is four-part music: a four-voice mass by Obrecht ('Malheur me bat') and a four-voice mass by Josquin ('Malheur me bat'). We shall even perform the three-voice chanson 'Malheur me bat', maybe by Ockeghem, with newly composed words since the original survives only with a title.

Our Purcell rating, which has always been there over the years while flickering between little and not much, is certainly set to rise in the 08/09 season: a pleasure for me. Like Bach, I have always counted Purcell among those who in another life would have done well in the renaissance period. We shall sing his *Jehovah, quam multi sunt* to an organ (tuned to A=395) in La Chaise Dieu, France; and give repeated perfomances of his a cappella music throughout the year. We can't do so much for Handel, who always insisted on using an orchestra.

For me personally the teaching and masterclassing side of what I (really) do is significantly increasing. In October 08 the choir at Merton College Oxford will begin to sing services. There has been quite a bit of media interest in this, but I would ask that this choir is not judged on the first year of its existence, let alone the first month. It will take three years to go through the normal cycle of undergraduate coming and going even to establish a base for what may follow - and in reality it will be years more to establish a proper tradition. Still, it is an exciting prospect.

Elsewhere the remit of renaissance polyphony widens. In April 2008 I shall conduct a choir in Lusaka (Zambia) in the music of Byrd and Tallis, as well as Tippett and Howells. In September 2008 I shall host four days of masterclasses in Osuna, Spain (the birthplace of Alonso Lobo). In November I will do the same at the Moscow Conservatory, Russia. This is in addition to the now well-established annual round of Tallis Scholars Summer Schools in Sydney, Oakham and Seattle, all of which are set to draw bigger numbers in 08 than before; and the courses I help with in Rimini, Evora and Venice.

Last updated: The Feast Day of Acepsimas of Hnaita, 2008