Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra

The Monteverdi Choir was founded in 1964 by Sir John Eliot Gardiner for a performance of the Monteverdi Vespers (1610) in King's College Chapel, Cambridge. A specialist Baroque ensemble, the Choir has become famous for its stylistic conviction and extensive repertoire, encompassing music from the Renaissance period to Classical music of the 20th century. They often appear with John Eliot Gardiner's orchestras, the English Baroque Soloists and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique.

A budget-range double CD entitled "A Classic Christmas" was released by Universal in 2005, which included two of the choir's recordings from 1998 ("Past Three O'Clock" and "The Lamb"), and which (presumably incorrectly) billed them as The Monteverdi Singers.

On 5 March 2014 the Choir celebrated its 50th anniversary with a repeat performance of the Monteverdi Vespers from King's College Chapel, in a concert broadcast live by BBC Radio 3.

In 2000 the Choir, with the English Baroque Soloists, undertook an ambitious tour, the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, in which it performed almost all of J.S. Bach's sacred cantatas in more than 60 churches in Europe, the UK and the US to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the composer's death. Some cantatas were excluded a priori from the pilgrimage, as their composition was not associated with religious calendar commitments.

Recordings of a number of the cantatas were released by Deutsche Grammophon on the Archiv label. However, most of the recordings made during the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage have been released in 28 volumes on Gardiner's own label, Soli Deo Gloria (recordings released by Deutsche Grammophon will not be released again on Soli Deo Gloria). The series was completed in 2012 with a live recording in London of cantatas for Ascension Day that were performed in Salisbury during the pilgrimage, but were not recorded for technical reasons. It is possible that some cantatas which were not performed during the pilgrimage will be added to the recording project, such as works for the inauguration of the Leipzig town council.

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Wikipedia