“Concordia's gently breathed, beautifully focused playing revealed the sighs, the tears and the sensuality of Dowland. A consort of five viols (led by Mark Levy) and a single lute (Elizabeth Kenny) let the delicious dissonances slip into place, never over-arguing their case and never failing to find the last flicker of an echoing phrase or melodic fragment. In between, Robin Blaze tuned his velveteen countertenor to consort songs and lute ayres by William Byrd and Dowland himself.” (Wigmore Hall, July 2008, Review by Hilary Finch, The Times)

Concordia was formed fifteen years ago by its director, Mark Levy, to ‘explore music involving viols of all shapes and sizes’. In recent seasons the ensemble has enthusiastically fulfilled this wide-ranging brief. A number of highly successful projects have seen the group expand to explore the repertoire of the prestigious ensembles of lutes, viols and voices that had a leading role in all the main European musical centres in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: a Charpentier anniversary programme for the South Bank Centre Early Music Festival, Venetian music for an Early Music Network tour, verse anthems for several major French festivals, masque music from Locke to Purcell in its original setting at London’s Banqueting House, a BBC TV documentary on William Lawes, and more.

Other projects have continued Concordia’s well-known involvement with the visual and dramatic arts. The Regina Monologues toured the UK with a distinguished series of actresses, including Penelope Keith and Janet Suzman, playing the aging Queen Elizabeth I, in a script specially written for Concordia by Susannah Waters and has most recently been seen at the Temple 2008 Festival in London. Other collaborations have included work with Will Kemp of the Adventures in Motion Pictures dance company, and the poet Glyn Maxwell, while numerous concert appearances, radio broadcasts and recordings have been linked to major exhibitions at the National Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts and elsewhere. Concordia’s involvement with the National Gallery’s blockbusting Titian exhibition, for example, led to two CD recordings and a major UK tour exploring the work of Andrea Gabrieli and his contemporaries. Concordia marked the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot in 2005 with a joint project with the King’s Singers, performing at the Tower of London as well as the Bath and Brighton Festivals and producing a CD for Signum Records, with performances in Poland, the Sage Gateshead and Germany in 2008/9. In 2006 they released a CD for Klara Radio for an exhibition at the Rubenshuis in Antwerp about William Cavendish, First Duke of Newcastle – who fled England for the Low Countries after a disastrous defeat in the Civil War and stayed with Rubens for a time.

Concordia has nonetheless not neglected the rich field of English consort music for viols, its series of recordings of consort music by Orlando Gibbons, for example, winning accolades including the Diapason d’Or and Choc de Musique, with other recordings including a much-lauded disc of consort songs by William Byrd with the countertenor Robin Blaze. Concert performances of small-scale repertoire have included two mini-series for the Wigmore Hall, celebrating the music of William Lawes in 2002 and the great Elizabethans in 2003. Meanwhile the group has also been active in creating a new repertoire for viols, commissioning and performing works by a variety of both young and established composers, most recently a cycle of seven new Lachrimae, commissioned in 2004 jointly with the Cheltenham Festival and subsequently heard at the Purcell Room in London in 2005. Concordia recently accompanied the well-known Gaelic singer Iarla Ó Lionáird in a track for his latest album on the Real World label. In 2007 they presented a programme of William and Henry Lawes and Orlando, Edward and Christopher Gibbons at the York Early Music Festival and gave concerts in Versailles, Pontoise and the Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci. 2008 includes London concerts at the Wigmore Hall, Lufthansa and Temple Festivals, and for the Meslanges de Printemps in Dijon as well as the Wratislavia Cantans in Poland and the Innsbruck Festspiele der Alten Musik. In 2009 they present two further Wigmore Hall recitals to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Henry Purcell.

www.violconsort.com

Concerts in 2008 and 2009

Click on each title for more information

Saturday 17 May 2008 - Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, London. www.lufthansafestival.org.uk/
Knock'd on the Head with Elin Manahan Thomas (soprano)

Friday 23 May 2008 - Meslanges de Printemps, Dijon. www.abcdijon.org/festival/planchefestos.htm
Arts of Fugue

Thursday 5 June 2008 - Temple Festival, London. www.templemusic.org/events/all/4
Regina Monologues - a words and music programme about Queen Elizabeth I of England with Penelope Keith as Elizabeth and countertenor William Purefoy

Tuesday 15 July 2008 - Wigmore Hall, London
Lachrimae with Robin Blaze (countertenor)

Monday 11 August 2008 - Innsbruck Festival of Early Music
The Silver Swan, with Miriam Allan (soprano)

7-11 September 2008 - Wratislawia Cantans, Poland. www.wratislavia.art.pl/program.htm
Treason and Discord with The King's Singers on 9 and 11 September (music by William Byrd including the Mass for 4 voices, and his contemporaries); English Consort Music - the Great Tradition on 7, 8 and 10 September

Saturday 27 September - Trinity Church, Jersey. www.thisisjersey.co.uk/jac/
Channel Crossings - English Divisions and French Airs

Friday 24 October 2008 - Sage Centre, Gateshead
Treason and Discord with The King's Singers

Friday 13 March 2009 and Tuesday 14 July 2009 - Purcell series Wigmore Hall, London - with Robin Blaze on 13 March, and with Sophie Daneman, James Gilchrist and Roderick Williams on 14 July

Friday 10 and Saturday 11 July 2009 - Antikenfestspiele, Trier
English Consort Music - the Great Tradition and Treason and Dischord with The King's Singers

Select discography

MUSIC FOR MONA LISA
Concordia, Robin Blaze
Metronome METCD 1023

CRYE
Musical tears, meditations and exclamations
Metronome METCD 1020

THE CAGED BYRD
Works for voices, viols and virginals by William Byrd
I Fagiolini, Concordia, Sophie Yates
Chandos CHAN 0609

ALL THE KING'S HORSES
Courtly music from Germany, Italy & France
Concordia, I Fagiolini
Metronome METCD 1013

ALL THE KING'S MEN
Henry VIII & the princes of the Renaissance
Concordia, I Fagiolini
Metronome METCD 1012

ROYAL FANTASIES
Orlando Gibbons Consort Music, vol. 1
Metronome METCD 1033

THOMAS CAMPION
Airs, vol. 1
Concordia, Michael Chance, Nigel North
Linn Records

GO FROM MY WINDOW
Orlando Gibbons Consort Music, vol. 2
Concordia, Rachel Elliott
Metronome METCD1039

KNOCK’D ON THE HEAD
Music for viols by William Lawes
Metronome METCD 1045

TITIAN: VENICE AND THE MUSIC OF LOVE
The musical world of Titian’s Venice
Metronome METCD 1052

WILLIAM BYRD
Consort Songs
Concordia, Robin Blaze and Elizabeth Kenny
Hyperion CDA67397

1605 – Treason and Dischord
William Byrd and the Gunpowder Plot
The King’s Singers and Concordia
Signum Classics SIGCD061

Iarla Ó Lionáird – Invisible Fields
Tuirimh Mhic Fhinen Dhuibh (Lament for Black Finn’s Son)
arranged by Gavin Bryars
Real World CDR W126

AMOROUS IN MUSIC
William Cavendish in Antwerp (1648-1660)
Concordia with Angharad Gruffydd Jones
Etcetera KTC 4019

Reviews

“…performed in their usual adroit fashion by Concordia under Mark Levy…viol runs are florid and galvanising…William Lawes’ Suite, a work of dazzling beauty and compression, excellently realised.”

(Amorous in Music, Classical CD Reviews/MusicWeb International)

“The performance is, of course, immaculate with clear articulation in both voice and instruments…delightful to listen to.”

(Amorous in Music, The Viol, Winter 2006-7)

To be released

CHRISTOPHER TYE – Viol Consorts
Metronome

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