Nigel Short is a British singer who is the founder and artistic director of the choir Tenebrae and Tenebrae Consort.[1] He was previously a member of The King's Singers.[2]
In 1993 Short, then aged 27, joined The King's Singers.[4] It was while performing with this ensemble that Short conceived of creating a larger group of singers capable of more "passionate sounds" combined with "the precision of ensembles like The King's Singers",[4] and a more "theatrical" style of performing within religious buildings, involving movement around the performance venue as well as dramatic use of lighting and ambiance. The result was Tenebrae, founded in 2001.[2] The choir was launched that year with a performance of Nigel Short's own composition, The Dream of Herod.[5] The choir has extensively toured to critical acclaim,[1] and won the Choral category of BBC Music Magazine's Awards in 2012.[5]
In 2009 Short was appointed Director of Music at the church of St Bartholomew-the-Great, London, where he directed the professional Priory Church Choir.[6] He held this post until 2015.[7]
Nigel Short is also a recording producer for Signum Records, producing the albums A Choral Christmas with the Rodolfus Choir conducted by Ralph Allwood[8] and Invisible Stars with the Choral Scholars of University College Dublin conducted by Desmond Earley.[9]
In 2021 Short and Tenebrae worked with the Self-Isolation Choir on Thomas Tallis's 40-part Spem in alium. The Tenebrae singers recorded each of the 40 parts, and Short conducted 40 rehearsals of 90 minutes, broadcast live on Youtube and available for choir members to watch again, in July and August. Choir members were invited to contribute recordings of their own contributions, to be edited into a performance to be broadcast in October 2021. The score used was that prepared by Hugh Keyte in 2020 for the Thomas Tallis Society.[10]
A choir is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which spans from the medieval era to the present, or popular music repertoire. Most choirs are led by a conductor, who leads the performances with arm, hand, and facial gestures.
The King's Singers are a British a cappella vocal ensemble founded in 1968. They are named after King's College in Cambridge, England, where the group was formed by six choral scholars. In the United Kingdom, their popularity peaked in the 1970s and early 1980s. Thereafter they began to reach a wider American audience, appearing frequently on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in the United States. In 1987, they were prominently featured as guests on the Emmy Award-winning ABC television special Julie Andrews: The Sound of Christmas.
Alonso Lobo was a Spanish composer of the late Renaissance. Although not as famous as Tomás Luis de Victoria, he was highly regarded at the time, and Victoria himself considered him to be his equal.
Sir Stephen John Cleobury was an English organist and music director. He worked with the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, where he served as music director from 1982 to 2019, and with the BBC Singers.
The Tallis Scholars is a British professional early music vocal ensemble normally consisting of two singers per part, with a core group of ten singers. They specialise in performing a cappella sacred vocal music.
Spem in alium is a 40-part Renaissance motet by Thomas Tallis, composed in c. 1570 for eight choirs of five voices each. It is considered by some critics to be the greatest piece of English early music. H. B. Collins described it in 1929 as Tallis's "crowning achievement", along with his Lamentations.
James Thomas Bowman was an English countertenor. His career spanned opera, oratorio, contemporary music and solo recitals. Arguably, he was after Alfred Deller the most important countertenor in the 20th century revival of the voice part. He combined early and baroque repertoire with contemporary work, becoming recognised for his portrayal of Oberon in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream and performing world premieres.
The National Youth Choir, formerly known as the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain and the British Youth Choir, is a family of choirs for outstanding young singers, and those with outstanding potential, in the United Kingdom. It comprises a total of five choirs for around 900 young people between the ages of 9 and 25:
Tenebrae is a London-based professional vocal ensemble founded in 2001 and directed by former King's Singer Nigel Short. Its repertoire covers works from the 16th to the 21st centuries, able to combine in one long program pieces as diverse as Victoria's Officium Defunctorum, secular and sacred motets for solo voices, and Talbot's 2005 Path of Miracles. The choir has toured internationally and made recordings, including contemporary works commissioned by them. The group was awarded the 2023 Rheingau Musikpreis.
Philip Lawson is a British choral conductor, composer and arranger. For 18 years he was a baritone with the King's Singers and the group's principal arranger for the last fifteen years of that period. In 2009 the group's album "Simple Gifts", on which Lawson arranged 10 out of 15 tracks, won the Grammy award for "Best Classical Crossover Album". In February 2012, he left the King's Singers to concentrate on his writing career.
Simon Brown was the director of music at King's College School in Cambridge from 1999-2014. and was the director of King's Voices from 2001 to 2013. He was a choral scholar in King's College Choir in the late 1970s, and since then has sung in the choirs of New College, Oxford, Winchester Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Her Majesty's Chapels Royal. His teaching career began at Bradford Grammar School in Yorkshire, and was followed by 12 years as Head of Academic and Choral Music at the Purcell School. His time at the Purcell School included conducting the youngest ever choir to sing Tallis' 40-part choral work Spem In Alium.
The Holst Singers are an amateur choir based in London, England. The choir is named indirectly after the English composer Gustav Holst, taking its name from the Holst Room at St Paul's Girls' School, the venue for rehearsals during the choir's early years.
Ben Parry is a British musician, composer, conductor, singer, arranger and producer. He is the Director of London Voices and was formally Artistic Director of the National Youth Choir.
Path of Miracles is an extended choral composition by Joby Talbot, written in 2005 following a commission from the vocal chamber group Tenebrae. Under the direction of Nigel Short, Tenebrae's first performance was scheduled for 7 July 2005 in London, but was delayed because of the bombings that took place in the city that day. The City of London Festival quickly rescheduled the event, and the world premiere took place on 17 July 2005 at St. Bartholomew-the-Great Church in London.
Peter Thomas Nardone BA FRCO is primarily a freelance conductor, singer and composer. He has sung with the Monteverdi Choir, The King’s Consort and the Tallis Scholars. He has been Director of Music at Chelmsford Cathedral and was subsequently Organist and Director of Music at Worcester Cathedral.
Alexander Richard William L'Estrange is an English composer of choral music and music for television and an arranger for vocal ensembles. He is also a jazz musician, choral workshop leader, presenter of children's concerts and was a jazz examiner and trainer for ABRSM.
Robin Tyson is an English countertenor who has a well documented career in opera, solo, and a cappella. He now works in the music management industry.
Signum Records, also known as Signum Classics, is a classical musical record label in the UK founded in 1997.
Alexander Levine, is a Russian-born British composer. He writes choral, chamber and orchestral music, publishing through Edition Peters.
David Hurley is a British countertenor who sang with The King's Singers from 1990 to 2016.
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