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 Arm of the Starfish Tallis reappears in the Austin family novel "The Young Unicorns", where he is attached to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, the same cathedral where Madeleine L'Engle was writer in residence for many years. He also appears in the second O'Keefe family novel, "Dragons in the Waters". Tallis is nicknamed "Tom" or "Father Tom" because of the historical composer Thomas Tallis, who wrote the "Tallis Canon". Calvin O'Keefe is a marine biologist, husband of Meg, and the father of seven children, the eldest of whom is Poly. Calvin first appeared in "A Wrinkle in Time",