32 years of the Orlando Consort at the University of Nottingham

Formed in 1988 by the Early Music Network of Great Britain, the Orlando Consort rapidly achieved a reputation as one of Europe’s most expert groups performing repertoire from the years 1050 to 1550. Their work successfully combines captivating entertainment and fresh scholarly insight; the unique imagination and originality of their programming together with their superb vocal skills has marked the Consort out as the outstanding leaders of their field. The Consort has performed at many of Britain’s top festivals (including the BBC Proms and the Edinburgh International Festival) and has toured extensively internationally.

 

The 2022-23 season will be the group's last, with concerts in Spain, Ireland, Italy, Belgium, the USA, Canada, Luxembourg, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The group's final performance will be in June 2023 in Boston, MA. 

 

The group first performed at the University of Nottingham on 26 January 1991, with a concert in Florence Boot Hall as part of the Department of Music’s ‘Early Music Series’. The Consort performed an Ars Nova programme featuring the music of Philippe de Vitry. 

 

This was the beginning of a long and deep relationship between the University and the Orlando Consort that has seen the group: perform a further 14 concerts between 1997 and 2023 – with one final concert to come on 25 March; become the Department of Music’s ‘Ensemble-in-Residence’ between 2011 and 2017, support by the Radcliffe Trust; deliver workshops as part of the Department of Music composition and academic modules including:

• performing undergraduate and post-graduate student compositions; 

• attending rehearsals and providing guidance to SU Mussoc (Viva Voce, OpSoc);

• and delivering informal careers’ sessions for student musicians.

 

A highlight of the Consort's relationship with the University of Nottingham came in February 2015 when the group performed in St Mary's Church, Nottingham in a concert also featuring the Fitzwilliam String Quartet, and University Philharmonia. Mussoc's Viva Voce chamber choir joined the Orlandos to perform Thomas Tallis's magisterial 40-part motet 'Spem in Alium'.

 

The group’s final performance at the University of Nottingham will be on Saturday 25 March in the Djanogly Recital Hall as part of Lakeside Arts spring 2023 season. The Consort and the University Chamber Choir will perform selections from the Machaut’s ‘Messe de Nostre Dame’ – widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of medieval music and of all religious music – and Tarik O’Regan’s ‘Scattered Rhymes’, which was commissioned by the Consort in 2006 and integrates fragments of Machaut's 14th-century Mass in rhythmically and harmonically fresh ways.

Today the London-born and San Francisco-based Tarik O’Regan is recognised as one of the leading composers of his generation and he is one of three composers who have been commissioned by The King to compose new pieces of music for The Coronation of Their Majesties The King and The Queen Consort taking place at Westminster Abbey on Saturday May 6, 2023.

 

Commissioned by Spitalfields Music, O’Regan’s ‘Scattered Rhymes’ was first performed by the Consort at the University of Nottingham on 3 May 2007 following its 2006 world premiere. Catherine Hocking, Lakeside Arts’ Head of Music Programmes had this to say following the 2007 performance:

 

 

It was performed again in the concert in St Mary's Church in February 2015. The performance, as part of the group's Radcliffe Trust residency at the University.

Further connections between the Orlando Consort and the University of Nottingham include the group’s Bass, Donald Greig, completing his PhD with the Department of Music in 2018 (awarded 2019). The title for which was ‘Voices Appeared:  Carl Theodor Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc and Early Fifteenth-Century Music – Live Music, Silent Film and Vocal Performance Practices’.

It is testimony to the extraordinary musicianship, scholarship, programme development and audience rapport that has ensured frequent invitations to the Orlando Consort to return regularly to the University over 30 years. Not only have the performed many wonderful concerts in the Djanogly Recital Hall, introducing audiences to musical treasures composed 500 or more years ago, they also brought fresh approaches and a willingness to explore beyond Western classical formats. In the six years that they were an ‘Ensemble-in-Residence’ supported by the Radcliffe Trust, their contribution to students’ experience through offering advice, workshopping student compositions and performing in concerts with them demonstrated how crucially important it is to develop deep, long-lasting relationships with musicians of this calibre. It has enabled us all to take risks in programming the kinds of projects involving students and professionals together that’s only feasible with mutual understanding and respect built over many, many years.