Red Byrd presents vocal music by composers as diverse as William Byrd, Monteverdi, Steve Reich and Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, focusing on song as a constant expression of human experience in the belief that the point of singing the music of the past is to illuminate the present. While Red Byrd's members all have a strong grounding in early music, the group set out to break new ground from its first concert, a programme of Songs of Love and Death by Monteverdi, Frank Martin, John Paul Jones and Harvey Brough with the instrumentalists of Tragicomedia playing both period instruments and electric guitars.

Red Byrd has made festival appearances in Birmingham, Bruges, Utrecht, Innsbruck, Heidelberg, Dublin, Udine and at the Tampere International Choral Festival in Finland, where it returned in June 1993 with the first performance of Ivan Moody's Passion and Resurrection with the Estonian Chamber Choir. They later performed the work again with the Capella Amsterdam at the Musica Sacra Festival in Maastricht, Holland.