The Tallis Festival
What is the Tallis Festival?The Tallis Festival, hosted by Exmoor Singers, is not a workshop, nor 'sing from scratch'. It is an opportunity to learn great music intensively over a weekend - always including Thomas Tallis' Spem in Alium and a larger scale work. The Festival attracts choral singers from around London and further afield (including France, Hungary, Finland and Japan so far), to form the Tallis Festival Choir, with the aim of performing a stunning public concert on the Sunday evening, whilst having fun in the process. "One of the highlights of my singing year." The Festival provides a friendly atmosphere, with everyone sharing a common goal of learning and performing the music to the very best of our collective abilities. This is challenging, but James Jarvis, our music director, provides intensive instruction throughout the weekend. |
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The Tallis Festival 2007 was recorded by BBC Radio 3 and featured on The Choir 
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Festival development
The Tallis Festivals have become a key event for Exmoor Singers – not only for the enormous amount of work needed to organise them, but as a significant musical experience and achievement.
The choir has hosted 'Tallis Performance Weekends' periodically over a number of years. The original concept was to bring choral friends together for intense rehearsals from a Friday evening through to a high quality public concert on the Sunday evening. The Weekends have become very popular, with choirs of between 120 and 160 singers being formed. They are neither workshops nor 'sing-from-scratch' concerts - the goal for every event has been by the Sunday evening to be able to give performances of a remarkably high standard.
In recent years the status and significance of the Weekends has increased enormously both for Exmoor Singers and for all the singers taking part, not least in become an annual event, instead of every two years or so.
Prior to becoming a Festival there were eleven 'Tallis Performance Weekends', fondly known as 'Tallis I' to 'Tallis X', and ending with 'Tallis D' to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Tallis in 2005.
Reflecting on the quality of the performances, the works performed and the strong commitment to new music, 'Performance Weekends' is now a wholly inadequate description of the events.
Moreover, in 2006, as a major departure for the Weekends, a new 40-part work was commissioned, Tentatio, from Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, and given its first peformance.
Thus what was in theory Tallis XII had much greater significance than any of the preceding eleven Weekends. It was the beginning - it was the 1st Tallis Festival.
Exmoor Singers are now immensely proud to host the Tallis Festival and the Tallis Festival Choir.
Repertoire
The raison d’être of the Weekends and now the Festival has always been Thomas Tallis' magnificant 40-part motet 'Spem in alium', which is performed with eight individual choirs around the concert venue, to give the audience the ultimate surround-sound experience.
The Weekends also include a larger scale choral work, often accompanied by orchestra, and usually another work. Recent Tallis Weekends have included Tippet's A child of our time, Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610, Rachmaninovs' Vespers (All night vigil), Vaughan Williams' Mass in G Minor and Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms.
New music and new commissions
The Tallis Weekends have also provided the opportunity for singers to work on and perform pieces that they are less likely to have come across before, and have included works by living composers such as John Tavener, Arvo Pärt, Henryk Gorecki, Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, Nicholas Maw, and Giles Swayne.
In 2003, Tallis IX included Giles Swayne's The Silent Land, and the composer came to work with the choir. This work, written for cello and 40-part choir, had been given its first performance at the Spitalfields Festival in 1998, where it was described by The Times as a "masterpiece". Those taking part in Tallis IX were delighted to be giving the first performance of The Silent Land with the singing forces Swayne had originally envisaged.
In 2005, Tallis D included Jaakko Mäntyjärvi's Psalm 150 in Grandsire Triples. To everyone's delight the Finnish composer decided that he and his wife should come to London to take part in the Weekend. He enjoyed the event so much that there and then he conceived of a 40-part work, which a few months later Exmoor Singers commissioned him to write.
Thus in 2006, the 1st Tallis Festival included the first performance of Mäntyjärvi's 40-part work Tentatio.
Tentatio
Love You Big as the Sky
For 2007, for the 2nd Tallis Festival, another new 40-part work was commissioned, Love You Big as the Sky, from Mancunian composer Peter McGarr. This new commission has been made possible through financial support from the PRS Foundation.
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"I need to write this piece, it's been waiting inside me for a long time, growing from a love of people, memories and landscape in my life. It's a huge love song for my wife, evoking the history and landscape of the Northumbrian coast and in particular the island of Lindisfarne. On a practical level, I want to write a piece that is within the reach of a good amateur choir and can also act as a convincing companion piece to the Thomas Tallis 40-part 'Spem in Alium'. Exmoor Singers of London and their director James Jarvis are the perfect performers for this; I've had a close working relationship with them. They have a unique insight and understanding into what I'm trying to achieve." |
Composer Peter McGarr |
Previous Tallis Festival Concerts
Tallis Festival 2007 on 'The Choir' - Sun 28 Oct 2007, BBC Radio 3 (broadcast)
Tallis Festival 2007 - Concert - Sun 14 Oct 2007, St Alban the Martyr, Holborn
Tallis Festival 2006: Temptation - Sun 19 Nov 2006, St Alban the Martyr, Holborn
Tallis D - Sun 6 Nov 2005, St Alban the Martyr, Holborn
Tallis X - Sun 7 Mar 2004, St Augustine's
Tallis IX - Sun 9 Feb 2003, St. Giles', Cripplegate
Tallis VIII - Sun 29 Apr 2001, Duke's Hall, Royal Academy of Music
Tallis VII - Sun 27 Sep 1998, Concert Hall, Royal College of Music
Tallis VI - Sun 2 Feb 1997, St. John's, Smith Square
Tallis V - Sun 24 Sep 1995, Holy Trinity
