A Jacobean Christmas

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Continuing their residency with Music at Oxford, the Marian Consort returns with A Jacobean Christmas, a festive programme that features early English composers at their most unbuttoned and celebratory, with music written for the famously festive Stuart court. Alongside these are more intimate, introspective sacred works by a golden age of English composers – Byrd, Gibbons, Weelkes and Bull – that in some cases belie their creators’ often colourful personal lives. 

The Jericho Youth Choir and St Barnabas Choristers will be joining The Marian Consort for three pieces as part of our With One Voice Learning and Participation project, which sees schoolchildren from Jericho working with music leaders and members of the Marian Consort on different singing and composition projects throughout 2023-24. 

This programme will not contain an interval. Mulled wine and mince pies will be available for purchase.

This is the second concert The Marian Consort will perform as part of their two year residancy with Music at Oxford. Their first concert was On the outside, Looking in which took place in May 2023.

‘Singing one person to a part, The Marian Consort give sublimely refined, spacious and impeccably tuned performances.‘ The Sunday Times

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

The Marian Consort is a vocal ensemble that presents bold and thrilling performances for audiences across the UK, Europe and North America. Led by founder and director, Rory McCleery, the group is composed of the very best singers in a flexible, intimate ensemble, allowing clarity of texture and subtlety of interpretation that illuminates the music for audience and performer alike. TMC features regularly on BBC Radio 3, and has released twelve recordings to critical acclaim, praised for ‘precision and pellucid textures’ (The Times).

Hailed as ‘brilliant discoverers, and exponents, of rare repertoire’ (The Observer), The Marian Consort performs music from the fifteenth century to the present day, with a focus on bringing to light and championing lesser-known works by composers such as Vicente Lusitano, Raffaella Aleotti, and Jean Maillard, reinvigorating their music for today’s listeners. Creating new music is of vital importance to TMC, and in recent years it has commissioned Electra Perivolaris, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Roderick Williams, David Fennessy, and Ben Rowarth.

The Marian Consort is a pioneer of projects which take audiences beyond the confines of the traditional concert, most notably ‘Breaking the Rules’, a staged concert-drama based on the life and crimes of Carlo Gesualdo called ‘daring and vivid’ by The Guardian. Other highlights include a debut at the BBC Proms; performances in the Bascule Chamber underneath London’s Tower Bridge; the premiere of Dani Howard’s ‘Unbound’ at Three Choirs Festival; and a Wigmore Hall recital presented in partnership with BBC Radio 3. The Marian Consort will make its debut tour of Japan in 2023.