Paul McCreesh

Conductor Paul McCreesh occupies a prominent place within London’s early-music community after establishing the Gabrieli Consort and Players, while also expanding his activities to direct ensembles that employ contemporary instruments.

Born in London on May 24, 1960, he pursued studies in cello performance and musicology at Manchester University yet promptly assembled his own groups to fulfill his artistic aims, among them a chamber choir and an ensemble devoted to period instruments. That second ensemble developed into the Gabrieli Consort and Players, which McCreesh formally launched in 1982 when he was twenty-two. The ensemble concentrated on late-Renaissance consort repertoire at a moment when such works were chiefly explored by modern brass quintets, setting it apart from prevailing practice. McCreesh further programmed music extending into the High Baroque, encompassing major compositions by Monteverdi, Schütz, Handel, and Bach.

His recording activity commenced during the 1980s, and in 1990 the Gabrieli Consort delivered its first commercial release, the album A Venetian Coronation 1595. In 1993 the ensemble joined the roster of Deutsche Grammophon and its Archiv early-music division, issuing a recording of the Michael Praetorius Christmas Mass the subsequent year. Beginning in the 1990s the Consort also supplied instrumental and choral support for several prominent operatic productions.

McCreesh and the Gabrieli forces undertook extensive tours and became regular participants at European festivals, two of which—the Brinkburn Summer Music Festival in Britain and the Cantans Festival in Wroclaw, Poland—he himself founded. He led the Polish event from 2006 until 2012. In 2013 he accepted his initial principal post with a modern-instrument orchestra, becoming music director of the Gulbenkian Orchestra of Lisbon. He has sustained continuing associations with the Basel Chamber Orchestra in Switzerland and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota, while also appearing as guest conductor with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic in Norway, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and the Sydney Symphony. From 2010 onward he has recorded for Signum Classics, beginning that year with a performance of the Berlioz Requiem involving the Wroclaw Philharmonic. His interpretations and discs of nineteenth-century music reflect the application of historically informed principles. In 2018 he and the Gabrieli Consort released the album A Rose Magnificat on Signum Classics; in 2019 and 2020 the same forces issued recordings of two Henry Purcell semi-operas. Following a pandemic-related interruption, McCreesh returned in 2024 on Signum Classics with an expanded Gabrieli Consort joined by Polish singers for a recording of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius.