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Merton College, Oxford

The details The Tallis Scholars directed by Peter Phillips perform in Merton College

Chapel on March 1, 1980

The Tallis Scholars, 40 years on Where

T he haircuts and outfits may have changed since the early days, but the Tallis Scholars are as committed today to musical excellence as when they were founded by Peter Phillips in 1973. The Gramophone Award-winning vocal ensemble launch their 40th-anniversary world tour with Tallis’s Spem in alium at St Paul’s Cathedral on March (visit barbican.org.uk/tallisscholars); their recording of the work has been topping classical charts thanks to the popularity of the novel Fifty Shades of Grey, in which it features. The group are pictured here in 1980 – keen observers will recognise countertenor Michael Chance (far right) – at Merton College Chapel, Oxford, where they’ve made many of their recordings (and where Phillips recently set up a choral foundation). It feels a long way from blockbuster novels, but for Phillips it is only natural that after 40 years of performing ‘one of the most remarkable achievements of the human mind’, Spem in alium has found ‘such a large new audience’.

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