The Marian Consort: Seeing through Sound

A visual and aural feast featuring some of the greatest painters and composers of the Renaissance.

Experience an event which vividly reveals how Renaissance art is full of sound. Angels sing out from altarpieces, ancient gods and goddesses compete in musical contests, and music provides an essential backdrop to sensuous, amorous encounters. Music of the Renaissance from composers including Guillaume Dufay and Josquin combines with beautiful new music by Barbara Monk Feldman, providing a contemporary meditation on the experience of viewing art.

This project is supported by the University of Sheffield, with the project advisor, Prof. Tim Shephard, giving a pre-concert talk at 6.30pm.

Please note this concert will not have an interval other than a 30 minute break between the pre-concert talk and the start of the main concert.

“The quality of the voices was exceptional.” Marian Consort audience member

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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 made its debut tour of Japan in 2023.

Photo credit: Nick Rutter