Early Music in Yorkshire - Period performances in historic venues – great halls, castles and churches

Rose Consort

The Rose Consort of Viols takes its name from a famous family of 16th-century viol makers, whose instruments coincided with the growth of English consort music. For nearly four decades the Rose Consort has been delighting audiences across the UK, Europe and further afield. Its programmes are all based on up-to-date research into the music and styles of performance.

As well as performing regularly at York Early Music Festival, the Consort has appeared at London’s Wigmore and South Bank Halls, is heard regularly on the BBC, including a Prom concert from Cadogan Hall, and has performed at the London International Exhibition of Early Music. It has performed at festivals in Canada and the USA and also featured as a guest ensemble at the Pan-Pacific Gamba Gathering in Hawaii. It has also performed with cathedral choirs in the UK and at Oslo Cathedral, as well as at festivals in Bratislava, Nuremberg, Cologne and in Austria. 

The consort’s 23 recordings on Naxos, Deux-Elles and Delphian use three different sets of instruments to cover repertory from the late 15th-century origins of consort music to the music of Henry Purcell. The Consort has appeared at Dartington International Summer School, giving concerts and coaching ensembles, activities it now continues at Benslow Music in Hitchin. roseconsort.co.uk

Elisabeth Paul

Based in London, where she specialised in solo performance at Royal Holloway, University of London, Elisabeth is a busy freelance singer. She is an alumna of the Genesis Sixteen choral training programme, run by Harry Christophers and Eamonn Dougan and is now a regular member of early music ensembles including the Tallis Scholars, Tenebrae, The Queen’s Six and Ensemble Pro Victoria. Her choral activities started when she was seven as a member of City of Birmingham Symphony Youth Chorus. With the choir, she toured Sweden and Malaysia and performed in several BBC Proms, under conductors including Sir Simon Rattle and Daniel Barenboim. 

Elisabeth continues to tour widely throughout Europe and the USA, and also enjoys a solo career singing oratorios that include Handel’s Messiah, Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music with the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Bach’s St John Passion, Magnificat, and B Minor Mass, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Mozart’s Requiem, and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. She has also performed operatic roles in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, The Fairy Queen and Britten’s Noye’s Fludde and has made a number of recordings for Hyperion and Delphian.

Consone Quartet

The Consone Quartet, the first period-instrument string quartet to become BBC New Generation Artists, has rapidly gained recognition for its honest and expressive interpretations of Classical and Romantic repertoire. Formed at the Royal College of Music in London, the quartet launched its professional career in 2015 and has since received numerous accolades, including the Royal Over-Seas League Ensemble Prize and a prestigious Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship. 

The quartet has toured extensively across Europe, South America and Canada, and returns to North America in 2025 for performances and collaborations with pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout. Festival appearances include Edinburgh, MA Festival Bruges, and Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. A recent highlight was the premiere of Gavin Bryars’ The Bridges of Königsberg, broadcast by BBC Radio 3. Committed to education, it has worked with major UK music institutions and will serve as Visiting Quartet with Music in the Round. Its acclaimed Mendelssohn recordings with Linn Records continue to attract critical praise worldwide. consonequartet.com

Elizabeth Kenny

Elizabeth Kenny is one of Europe’s leading lute players, described as “incandescent” (Music and Vision), “radical” (The Independent on Sunday), and “indecently beautiful” (Toronto Post). Over 20 years of touring, she has collaborated with many top period instrument groups. She played with Les Arts Florissants (1992–2007) and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (1997–2015), continuing to initiate 17th-century projects like The Hypochondriack and A Restoration Tempest.

Her research has led to acclaimed recordings of Lawes, Purcell, and Dowland, as well as to the formation of her ensemble, Theatre of the Ayre. Elizabeth also works with singers like Robin Blaze, Ian Bostridge and Nicholas Mulroy. She has recorded William Lawes’ Royal Consort and Dowland’s Lachrimae (2016), and appears on Warner Classic’s Shakespeare Songs, which won a 2017 Grammy Award.

As a soloist, she plays diverse repertoire and premieres works by James MacMillan, Heiner Goebbels, and Benjamin Oliver. She is Director of Performance at Oxford University and Professor of Lute at the Royal Academy of Music. elizabethkenny.co.uk

Nicholas Mulroy

Born in Liverpool, Nicholas began as a chorister at the Metropolitan Cathedral before studying Modern Languages at Cambridge and voice at the Royal Academy of Music. He is in high demand for concert, recital and opera engagements internationally.

Nicholas has performed at venues such as the Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, and Salzburg Festival. He has collaborated with renowned conductors and ensembles, including Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Paul McCreesh, and Lars-Ulrik Mortensen. He has sung with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, BBC Orchestras, Melbourne Symphony and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, among others.

In opera, Nicholas has appeared at the Palais Garnier, Glyndebourne, and the Grand Capitole in Toulouse. A committed recitalist, he performs regularly at Wigmore Hall and various festivals. He has recorded widely, including award-winning projects.

Nicholas is a Musician in Residence at Girton College, Cambridge, Associate Director of the Dunedin Consort and a Visiting Professor at the Royal Academy of Music. nicholasmulroy.com

ApotropaïK

The ApotropaïK ensemble brings a vibrant, youthful perspective to medieval music, with a diverse instrumentation and a unique approach that blends research, creativity and emotion. Trained at the CNSMD in Lyon, its members have worked with renowned specialists such as Pierre Hamon, Anne Delafosse, Raphaël Picazos and Angélique Mauillon. The ensemble highlights the richness of each instrument, creating a dynamic listening experience by blending different timbres.

Founded in 2015 during the France-Korea Year celebrations, ApotropaïK has since performed at prominent festivals across France and Europe, including Mars en Baroque (Marseille), MA Festival (Bruges), and the Gröpelinger Barock Festival (Bremen). Its repertoire spans the 12th to 15th centuries, focusing on both monody, such as French and Italian estampies (a medieval dance and musical form), and polyphony from sources such as the Codex Chantilly and the Chansonnier Cordiforme.

ApotropaïK’s achievements include first prize at the 2017 Journées de musique ancienne de Vanves and three awards at the 2022 York Early Music International Young Artists Competition. Its debut album La Bella Donna was released in June 2023, focusing on the female figure in medieval music. From 2023 to 2025, the ensemble is in residence at the Royaumont Foundation. apotropaik.eu/en

The English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble

The English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble is a virtuoso period instrument group with a host of distinguished recordings to its name. In addition to its recital work, the ensemble collaborates with leading vocal ensembles such as I Fagiolini, The Tallis Scholars, Alamire, Resurgam, The BBC Singers, The Marian Consort, Westminster Cathedral Choir, and is a regular at major festivals. 

ECSE is in demand as a recording ensemble, contributing to Gramophone Award-winning discs such as The Spy’s Choirbook (Obsidian), and the monumental Striggio mass in 40 parts Missa ecco si beato giorno with I Fagiolini (which scooped the Gramophone Award for Early Music and also the Diapason d’Or). ECSE celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2018 with a solo CD on the Resonus label entitled Music for Windy Instruments: sounds from the Court of James I. 2025 sees a landmark collaboration with I Fagiolini, recording and touring Monteverdi’s iconic Vespers of 1610. ecse.co.uk

The Tallis Scholars

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 the purity and clarity of sound which he feels best serves the Renaissance repertoire. It is the resulting beauty of sound for which The Tallis Scholars have become so widely renowned. 

In 2013 the group celebrated its 40th anniversary with a World Tour, performing 99 events in 80 venues across 16 countries. In 2020 Gimell Records marked 40 years of recording the group by releasing a remastered version of its 1980 recording of Allegri’s Miserere. In 2023/24 the ensemble celebrated its 50th birthday, and has now performed over 2,500 concerts.

Highlights of the 2024/25 season include performances in Japan, the USA, East Asia, several appearances in London, and touring throughout Europe and the UK. Its recordings have won many international awards. The 2020 release including Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae won BBC Music Magazine’s Recording of the Year and the Gramophone Early Music Award. Its latest release, music by Robert Fayrfax, was Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice. thetallisscholars.co.uk

Peter Phillips

Peter Phillips has dedicated his career to the research and performance of Renaissance polyphony, and to the perfecting of choral sound. He founded The Tallis Scholars in 1973, with whom he has now appeared in over 2,500 concerts worldwide and made over 60 discs in association with Gimell Records. Through this work, Peter Phillips and The Tallis Scholars have done more than any other group to establish Renaissance sacred vocal music as one of the great repertoires of Western classical music.

Peter also conducts other specialist ensembles, including the BBC Singers (London), the Netherlands Chamber Choir (Utrecht), the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir (Tallinn), The Danish Radio Choir (Copenhagen), and El León de Oro (Oviedo). He is Patron of the Chapel Choir of Merton College, Oxford.

In addition to conducting, he is a well-known writer. He contributed a regular column to The Spectator for 33 years and has been publisher of The Musical Times since 1995. His books include English Sacred Music 1549–1649 (1991) and What We Really Do (2013). In 2018, BBC Radio 3 broadcast his six-part series The Glory of Polyphony. He is a Bodley Fellow of Merton College and an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford.

Justin Taylor

In 2015, Franco-American harpsichordist Justin Taylor gained international recognition when, at the age of 23, he won First Prize at the prestigious International Musica Antiqua Competition in Bruges. He also took home the Audience Prize, the Alpha Prize, and the EUBO Developing Trust Prize, awarded to the most promising young European musician. That same year, he co-founded the ensemble Le Consort with violinists Sophie de Bardonnèche and Théotime Langlois de Swarte, focusing on the trio sonata genre. The ensemble now tours internationally.

In 2017, Justin was nominated for Young Soloist at the French Victoires de la Musique and received the Musical Revelation of the Year Prize from the Professional Critics Association. He has performed at prestigious venues and festivals, such as the Philharmonie de Paris, BOZAR Brussels, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Kölner Philharmonie, and Radio France. He has also appeared at the BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Series at LSO St Luke’s, the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, the Library of Congress in Washington DC among other venues. As a soloist, he has performed with renowned orchestras, including Concerto Köln, Orchestre National de Lille, and the Orchestre de Chambre de Genève. justintaylorharpsichord.com

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

The OAE was formed in 1986 by a group of musicians who took a good look at that curious institution we call the orchestra, and decided to start again from scratch. The Orchestra plays on instruments (or replicas) and use techniques from the time the music was written. This gets closer to the experience audiences would have had at the time the music was written. There are some quite radical differences between historic instruments and modern ones. The name refers to the common term for the explosion of science, philosophy and culture in Western Europe during the 1600s and 1700s, the Age of Enlightenment.  

The OAE is an orchestra in residence at the Southbank Centre and Kings Place in London and Glyndebourne opera festival, and tours frequently around the UK and internationally. In 2020, the OAE became the very first orchestra in the UK to take up residence in a school through its embedded education partnership with Acland Burghley School in Camden.