Tallis Festival Tallis Festival The Tallis Festival, hosted by Exmoor Singers of London, forms the Tallis Festival Choir for just one weekend every 12 to 18 months. The Festival always includes Thomas Tallis' Spem in Alium for 40-part choir, but in addition has commissioned new 40-part works by modern composers, as companion pieces to Spem in Alium. In 2007 the Festival was recognised by the BBC for its contribution to new music and highlights from the Festival were broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 28 October 2007. The Festival originated from "Tallis Performance Weekends", held periodically over a number of years. The
The Tallis Scholars The Tallis Scholars 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. The group was formed in 1973 by Peter Phillips, who in 1972-1975 was an organ scholar at St John's College, Oxford and studied music with David Wulstan and Denis Arnold. Philips invited the members of chapel choirs from Oxford and Cambridge to form an amateur Renaissance vocal music ensemble, which turned professional after ten years of concert-giving. From the first performance in the