Formed in 1988 by the Early Music Network of Great Britain, The Orlando Consort rapidly achieved a reputation as one of Europe’s most expert and consistently challenging groups performing repertoire from the years 1050 to 1550. Their work successfully combines captivating entertainment and fresh scholarly insight; the unique imagination and originality of their programming together with their superb vocal skills have marked out the Consort as the outstanding leader of their field.

The Orlando Consort has performed at many of Britain’s top festivals (including the BBC Proms and the Edinburgh International Festival) and has in recent years made visits to France, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, the USA and Canada, South America, Singapore, Japan, Greece, Russia, Austria, Slovenia, Portugal and Spain. The Consort’s impressive discography includes a collection of music by John Dunstaple and ‘The Call of the Phoenix’, which were selected as Early Music CDs of the Year by Gramophone in 1996 and 2003 respectively; their albums of music by Compère, Machaut, Ockeghem, Josquin, ‘Popes and Anti-Popes’, ‘Saracen and Dove’ and ‘Passion’ have also all been shortlisted. Their 2008 release of Machaut’s Messe de Notre Dame and Scattered Rhymes, an outstanding new work by the young British composer Tarik O’Regan and featuring the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, was shortlisted for a BBC Music Magazine award. Of their series of recordings for Hyperion exploring the polyphonic songs of Guillaume de Machaut, the first release (‘Le Voir Dit’) was selected by The New York Times critics as one of their favourite recordings of 2013 and was shortlisted for a Gramophone Award, as were the fourth and eighth titles in the series (‘Sovereign Beauty’ and ‘The lion of nobility’) and their anthologies of music by Loyset Compère and Guillaume Dufay.

The Consort’s performances also embrace the spheres of contemporary music and improvisation: to date they have performed over thirty premieres and they have created striking collaborations with the jazz group Perfect Houseplants and, for a project exploring historic Portuguese and Goan music, the brilliant tabla player Kuljit Bhamra. Recent concert highlights have included a return visit to New York’s Carnegie Hall and performances in Sweden, Denmark, Slovenia, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Poland and Spain. The group continues to tour Europe and the USA with a grand project presenting Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent masterpiece La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc with a soundtrack of music composed and performed during the lifetime of Joan of Arc. They have given seventy performances of the work, including the fiftieth at the Salzburg Festival in Austria in 2018.