• Claire Coleman soprano
• Daniel Auchincloss tenor
• Psalmody
• The John Jenkins Consort
• directed by Peter Holman

We continue our Monteverdi project with the ground-breaking and ever-popular 1610 Vespers – but with a difference. In his great collection of music for Vespers of the Blessed Virgin, published in Venice in 1610, Monteverdi seems to have brought together music written at various times for different groups. In his new version Peter Holman follows the practice of the time by making the collection suitable for particular circumstances: he replaces three of the psalms with unfamiliar but superb settings of the same texts published late in Monteverdi’s life and after his death, making the whole work more consistent in its vocal scoring and more suitable for a chamber choir accompanied by a period-instrument ensemble.

In this performance regular SVF soloists, including Claire Coleman and Daniel Auchincloss, are joined by Psalmody and the John Jenkins Consort, playing cornetts, sackbuts, recorders, Renaissance flutes, violins, bass violin, violone, theorbo and two organs. Among the wind players are students from Birmingham Conservatoire and the Royal College of Music, mentored by members of the distinguished cornett and sackbut group QuintEssential.

Concert supported by YouGov and donors to The Monteverdi Project Fund