Catherine Bott talks to Jeremy West and Jamie Savan from the group - which is now in its 25th year and has a reputation as one of the foremost wind ensembles in the world - and introduces items from a concert given at the 2008 Spitalfields Festival, featuring music by Grillo and Gabrieli.

BBC Radio 3, Sunday 2nd November, 2008

Hear it live on the Radio 3 and online or on listen again HERE

More information on His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts HERE

Catherine Bott talks to Jeremy West and Jamie Savan from His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts – now celebrating its 25th year and with a reputation as one of the foremost wind ensembles in the world - and introduces items from a concert given at the 2008 Spitalfields Festival, featuring music by Giovanni Battista Grillo and Gabrieli.

Please listen in if you can - its all free! 



Listen live on-air, on the internet and for up to a week following the broadcast :

BBC Radio Three Early Music Show : http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/earlymusicshow

Giovanni Battista Grillo : Complete Instrumental Music & Selected Motets
 His Majesty's Sagbutts & Cornetts 
SFZ0107, distributed by Harmonia Mundi, £12.99
 This splendid recording provides an enticing introduction to a Venetian composer who stood at the watershed between Giovanni Gabrieli and Monteverdi. The ensemble's gorgeously rich and satisfying sound does full justice to eight-part canzonas and cori spezzati motets, which play off contrasted high and low choirs in the best Gabrieli manner.
Small-scale motets such as the luxuriantly expressive Dic mihi, however, show Grillo's command of the up-to-date concertato style developed by Monteverdi and Alessandro Grandi.
 Elizabeth Roche, Daily Telegraph, 30 October 2008

His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts:
 Faye Newton ~ soprano; Nicholas Mulroy ~ tenor; Eamon Dougan ~ baritone
Jamie Savan, Jeremy West and Bruce Dickey ~ cornetts
Adam Woolf, Abigail Newman, Philip Dale, Andrew Harwood-White and Stephen Saunders ~ sackbutts



As well as the recording of the complete works of GIOVANNI BATTISTA GRILLO, His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts are proud and excited to announce two new releases on their rapidly growing record label, Sfz Music.

For our latest recording, BUCCANEER, HMSC don pirate gear and plunder the rich repertoire of 16th and 17th Century music originally written for viols, keyboards, and voices. Like the buccaneers of old, we have taken a special pleasure in looting Spanish gold to add to our rich treasure trove of recital pieces. Music by Philips, Gibbons, and Dowland sparkles alongside jewels by Ortiz, Arauxo, and Guerrero.

To read more, hear sound clips, and to buy the disc, please follow this link:

http://www.sfzmusic.co.uk/cd-buccaneersfzm.html

BIOGRAPHY

His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts is a group of virtuoso wind players who specialise in playing early music in authentic styles on original instruments. The original incarnation of His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts was founded in 1516, and for almost three centuries was the jewel in the crown of the English royal musical establishment.

His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts is celebrating its 25th season this year. Essentially a recital group comprising two cornetts, three sackbutts and chamber organ, HMSC often joins with singers and string players and choirs such as the Monteverdi Choir, BBC Singers, Ex Cathedra, The Tallis Scholar, the choirs of Trinity and King’s College, Cambridge, as well as those of Westminster Abbey, St Paul's Cathedrals.

His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts has eighteen recordings to its credit, among them a Bach Album, which was honoured as the "recording of the year" in Gramophone Magazine, December 2002.

2007 saw the launch of the group’s own recording label sfz; their first release, a premiere recording of the complete instrumental music and selected motets of Giovanni Battista Grillo, winning a five star maximum award from Goldberg Magazine.

Recently the group performed at the BBC Proms in Striggio’s reconstructed Mass in 60 parts and with the Black Dyke and Grimethorpe brass bands for an extravagant celebration of brass. At the South Bank Festival, they joined The King’s Singers in the Queen Elizabeth Hall for a truly memorable occasion, and have given special concerts in Bavaria for the 400th Anniversary of the Union of Auhausen, London’s Spitalfields Festival, Santiago de Compostela and the first modern performances in the USA of the Striggio Mass at the University of California, Berkeley.

For press review copies and for more information on the music of HIS MAJESTYS SAGBUTTS AND CORNETTS contact :

Andrew Logan, http://www.loganartsmanagement.com, +44 (0) 141 956 1255, +44 (0) 7841 582 851

or visit

His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts : http://www.hmsc.co.uk

and

http://www.sfzmusic.co.uk