Peter Phillips

About

Few conductors have done more to bring Renaissance polyphony to general audiences than Peter Phillips, who founded The Tallis Scholars back in 1973 with a mission to dig into the neglected corners of early choral music. What set the group apart from the start was a willingness to go beyond the obvious English repertoire, programming composers like Obrecht, Ockeghem, Gombert and Cardoso long before they became fashionable. The founding of Gimell Records in 1980 gave Phillips the freedom to record exactly what he wanted, filling real gaps in the catalogue. A Gramophone Record of the Year in 1987 cemented the Tallis Scholars' reputation, and Phillips spent the following decades building on it methodically, including a decades long project to record all of Josquin des Prez's masses. He has also worked with living composers, most notably John Tavener, whose pieces written specifically for the group include Ikon of Light and The Requiem Fragments. Beyond the Scholars, Phillips has conducted the BBC Singers, La Chapelle Royale of Paris, and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, among others.