Author Topic: The Tallis Scholars  (Read 2809 times)

Offline richidoo

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The Tallis Scholars
« on: April 12, 2018, 07:39:31 AM »
Finally got to see them live at Duke Chapel last night. It was PACKED. Sat in uncomfortable wooden pew about 200 feet from the singers. Huge stone room (like 100 x 150 x 600) has nice acoustics for this act. About 2 second reverb, but very smooth. It took a couple songs before my ears adjusted to the low SPL (probably <65dB) and the reverb smearing, but then it was really nice. 2/3 of the songs were traditional medieval harmony, but a few songs were modern arrangements, that's what I like. Dissonance! Tallis Scholars sings in tune, so when they sing modern arrangements with dissonance it is really powerful. They put on a great concert.

There are only 10 singers but when they were on full song they easily filled the whole cathedral with sound. There is one tenor who has a very distinct voice. I recognized it from the recordings, but I was sitting so far away I couldn't see whose lips were moving when he was soloing. There's 5 girls and 5 guys, one guy sang alto!

The audience was terrible, as expected. The din of ancient music takes its toll a couple songs in and they start fidgeting and focusing on themselves in defense. Par for the course for museum music.

They announced next year's choral acts, some good ones coming, like NY Polyphony (John Atkinson is their recording engineer) and Latvian Boys Choir, etc. 5 choral acts in all, I think. I might try some of those.