Biography
Scotland's resilient ensemble Cappella Nova focuses its efforts on early Scottish choral repertoire together with present-day compositions from Scotland and the broader British Isles. Since its inception the ensemble has brought more than one hundred fresh scores into being through commissions and has joined forces onstage with numerous figures drawn from pop and jazz circles.
Alan Tavener, a conductor and music scholar, and soprano Rebecca Tavener established the group in 1982, and Alan continues to serve as artistic director. It stands as the sole professional Scottish choir devoted exclusively to early and contemporary music. Based in Glasgow, the ensemble fields roughly sixteen singers. From 1986 onward it has sustained an extensive commissioning program that has engaged many of the nation's foremost composers, among them John Tavener, whose oratorio Resurrection received its premiere in 1990 and later aired on BBC Radio 3, and James MacMillan, who contributed several works including the 1994 cantata Seven Last Words from the Cross.
The choir launched its recording activities in 1992 with the ASV box set Robert Carver: Scottish Renaissance Polyphony and has since maintained a particular emphasis on Carver's output in both concert and studio settings. In 1998 the singers performed before Queen Elizabeth II on Saint Andrew's Day, November 30, during the inaugural ceremonies for the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. They have appeared alongside the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, percussionist Evelyn Glennie, and the R&B ensemble Sister Sledge, and they contributed to The Delgados' 2003 album Hate. International itineraries have taken the group repeatedly to Germany and France as well as to Ireland, additional parts of continental Europe, Russia, and the United States. Within Scotland the choir presented the program Echoes & Traces during 2016 and 2017, a cycle of eight newly commissioned pieces marking the nine-hundredth anniversary of St. Magnus of Orkney.
Cappella Nova later created the subsidiary vocal group Canty, dedicated to medieval repertory. The two ensembles have together issued more than twenty albums on the ASV, Gaudeamus, and Linn imprints; the Linn catalog includes the 2015 release Tavener Conducts Tavener and Sir James MacMillan: Consecration from 2021. The parent organization also sustains educational initiatives, among them Singing for All, which grew out of Alan Tavener's investigations into the physical and psychological benefits of group singing.
Alan Tavener, a conductor and music scholar, and soprano Rebecca Tavener established the group in 1982, and Alan continues to serve as artistic director. It stands as the sole professional Scottish choir devoted exclusively to early and contemporary music. Based in Glasgow, the ensemble fields roughly sixteen singers. From 1986 onward it has sustained an extensive commissioning program that has engaged many of the nation's foremost composers, among them John Tavener, whose oratorio Resurrection received its premiere in 1990 and later aired on BBC Radio 3, and James MacMillan, who contributed several works including the 1994 cantata Seven Last Words from the Cross.
The choir launched its recording activities in 1992 with the ASV box set Robert Carver: Scottish Renaissance Polyphony and has since maintained a particular emphasis on Carver's output in both concert and studio settings. In 1998 the singers performed before Queen Elizabeth II on Saint Andrew's Day, November 30, during the inaugural ceremonies for the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. They have appeared alongside the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, percussionist Evelyn Glennie, and the R&B ensemble Sister Sledge, and they contributed to The Delgados' 2003 album Hate. International itineraries have taken the group repeatedly to Germany and France as well as to Ireland, additional parts of continental Europe, Russia, and the United States. Within Scotland the choir presented the program Echoes & Traces during 2016 and 2017, a cycle of eight newly commissioned pieces marking the nine-hundredth anniversary of St. Magnus of Orkney.
Cappella Nova later created the subsidiary vocal group Canty, dedicated to medieval repertory. The two ensembles have together issued more than twenty albums on the ASV, Gaudeamus, and Linn imprints; the Linn catalog includes the 2015 release Tavener Conducts Tavener and Sir James MacMillan: Consecration from 2021. The parent organization also sustains educational initiatives, among them Singing for All, which grew out of Alan Tavener's investigations into the physical and psychological benefits of group singing.
Albums
