MUSLIVE partners with vocal ensemble Siglo de Oro to implement the project’s performance-led research.
Directed by Patrick Allies, Siglo de Oro is recognised internationally for its golden tone, fresh interpretations, and innovative programming. Since its acclaimed debut at the Spitalfields Festival in 2014, Siglo de Oro has performed all over the UK, Europe and North America, recorded five albums for Delphian Records, and broadcast regularly on BBC Radio 3.
Siglo de Oro shares with the Musical Lives project an interest in early music, as well as a commitment to enabling lost or overlooked voices to be heard. Among Siglo de Oro’s recordings with Delphian Records are fifteenth-century music written for Milan Cathedral and the world premiere recording of a late-Renaissance mass by Hieronymus Praetorius, released in 2018, which was BBC Music Magazine’s Choral and Song Album of the Month. Siglo de Oro’s most recent recording, The Mysterious Motet Book of 1539, reached number 9 in the UK specialist classical chart, and was one of Music Web International’s Recordings of the Year for 2022.
Siglo de Oro has an ongoing association with the charity Multitude of Voyces, whose mission is to promote the work of underrepresented composers. The ensemble has regularly commissioned new works, including pieces by Kerensa Briggs, Owain Park, Ben Rowarth and Marisse Cato. In the 2024-25 season, the group will take up a three-concert residency at Wigmore Hall, as well as giving concerts across the UK and in Canada, the USA and Finland.
In the initial phase of collaboration, Patrick Allies and three of Siglo de Oro’s singers––Hannah Ely, Rebekah Jones and Paul Bentley-Angell––work closely with the MUSLIVE team and other scholars involved in the project (our compaignons) to explore research questions, develop accessible performances and a methodology for learning and teaching medieval music.
Photo credit: Joselito Verschaeve and MA festival