Our Biography
It’s 2001: John Eliot Gardiner has just completed a world tour of Bach Cantatas with his Monteverdi Choir and interest in early music and period performance is blossoming. Christopher Monks and a group of university colleagues with a shared passion for music from the Renaissance to Baroque, coupled with the imagination to find new and unusual ways to present concerts, enlist the help of Dame Emma Kirkby and stage their first concert.
Initially teamed with a young band of period instrumentalists called Armonico Tributo, the singers named themselves Armonico Consort, but it wasn’t long before they started picking their own players with a natural, instinctive passion to play with voices. Audiences seemed to love their engaging and imaginative approach, and most concerts in the first years sold out.
“That gave us confidence, energy and self-belief to carry on and do more, also to take more risks with our programming, and keep on experimenting,”
says Christopher.
The ideas kept flowing, as did the titles (“many of them were created down the pub”) including the concert programmes Naked Byrd and Supersize Polyphony, and newly-created operas Monteverdi’s Flying Circus, Too Hot to Handel and Baroque Around the Block (opera’s answer to Horrible Histories). Their horizons broadened – alongside Purcell, Bach and Palestrina, might be found Elgar and Bernstein – but at the heart remained music of the Baroque and Renaissance, including some rarely-heard gems, performed by the finest singers and players using period instruments.
“We take great care to craft programmes which bring as much little-known music to life as possible, and find new and imaginative ways to bring this music to audiences. I’m particularly proud of Supersize Polyphony where we perform 40 and 60-part works by Tallis and Striggio completely in the round, interspersed with Hildegard of Bingen”.
It earned the group their first 5 star review, from The Times, and there were plenty more to follow.
Among many notable events were their Wigmore Hall debut in 2003, performing at the Hampton Court Palace Festival with violinist Nicola Benedetti (beginning a continuing musical friendship), Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Barbican and Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with the Philharmonia Orchestra, as well as tours to Dublin, and giving the first performances of Francesco Scarlatti’s music in Italy (Naples) and Tel Aviv. By 2011 they had reached their 300th concert – a performance of Carmina Burana at the RSC featuring Armonico Consort and youngsters from its singing education programme, AC Academy.
Most recently Armonico Consort has become the world’s leading authority on the choral works of Francesco Scarlatti – a forgotten member of the famous dynasty. Their recording of his Dixit Dominus and Messe a 16 has been named “Spectacular - the classical music find of the century” by Le figaro, Paris, and the first modern performance of his only surviving oratorio Daniele described as “an exemplary resuscitation” by The Times.
An education programme was fundamental to Armonico Consort from the outset. Christopher explains,
“We were asked by a county music service not to form a children’s choir, which struck me as odd as there were so many young people and so few opportunities. We ignored them, and in 2007 founded our first AC Academy after-school choir and they've been going strong ever since.”
Alongside this was an in-school programme:
“We spotted a gap in the provision for young people and devised an effective and efficient way of training teachers as choir leaders, leaving a strong legacy in each school.”
This Choir Creation scheme became the backbone of AC Academy and has established almost 300 choirs and trained teachers as choir leaders, reaching over 250,000 young people. The programme offers high quality performance opportunities in venues across the country, including the Royal Albert Hall where Armonico’s biggest project to date, It Takes a City for 2000 voices and orchestra, was premiered in 2022.
And the work goes on: in 2018 a new scholarship scheme began offering singing lessons from the finest tutors and performance opportunities alongside professional musicians to exceptionally talented young singers. Their outreach work has taken them to Kenya, where they created choirs and trained leaders for street children in Nairobi, and to Mexico where they worked with students at Fundación Azteca and trained choral conductors across the country.
The mental and physical well-being benefits of singing are well established, and new research suggests Baroque music is extremely effective at unlocking memories for those affected by dementia. With specialist training from the Alzheimer’s Society, Armonico’s Communities programme now includes singing sessions in care homes, and its first community choir – Warwick Memory Singers – has been joined by two more in Solihull and Coventry.
Armonico Consort counts Dame Judi Dench, Jeremy Irons, Nicola Benedetti, Sir Willard White, Ian Bostridge and Catrin Finch among its many guest artists. They have developed relationships with major concert halls across the UK and their recordings are regularly featured on BBC Radio 3, Classic FM and radio stations across the world.
