On the outside, looking in | The Marian Consort

The award-winning singers of The Marian Consort explore common ground between the marginalised voices of the past alongside contemporary responses from British composers.

The music of Renaissance nun Raffaella Aleotti, who was described as ‘not human, but truly an angelic spirit’, is heard alongside works by Vicente Lusitano, who while known principally in his lifetime as a music theorist is also notable for being the first published black composer. Also featured is the music of William Byrd in this his anniversary year: the searing emotion of Byrd’s extraordinary vocal chamber music was the result of his ardent Catholic beliefs, something which made him an outsider in Protestant Elizabethan England.

Threaded between these are works from some of the most exciting contemporary women composers which serve to interrogate and re-imagine their Renaissance counterparts.

‘Singing one person to a part, The Marian Consort give sublimely refined, spacious and impeccably tuned performances.‘ The Sunday Times