Endymion

Endymion has made a speciality of 20th century music theatre and small-scale opera, including collaborations with the Royal Opera House's Garden Venture, Women's Playhouse Trust and Opera Factory, with which it undertook an extensive European tour of Dido and Aeneas and Curlew River during 1995. Endymion has appeared at most of the major British fe... stivals and performed three times at the Proms. Recent appearances at the Southbank Centre, Kings Place and at the Cheltenham and Spitalfields Festivals have included works by Kurtag, Simon Holt and Simon Bainbridge, a new work by Michael Zev Gordon, an Elisabeth Lutyens portrait concert and premires of works by Raymond Yiu, Simon Wills and Brian Elias. A retrospective of Anthony Gilbert's music featured a dozen specially composed musical tributes by distinguished contemporaries, including Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies, Alexander Goehr, Colin Matthews and Anthony Payne. Endymion's collaborations with the BBC Singers have included world premires of Giles Swayne's Havoc (Proms, 1999) and Edward Cowie's Gaia (2003), as well as the UK premire of Birtwistle's Ring Dance of the Nazarene at the 2004 Proms ("startling virtuosity from all concerned" - Daily Telegraph). A particularly successful (and much imitated) innovation is the wide-ranging series of Composer Choice concerts staged by Endymion on the South Bank, in which composers select and introduce work by themselves and others. Participants have included Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, Oliver Knussen, Gavin Bryars, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Judith Weir, John Woolrich and Michael Berkeley. Unusually for chamber groups so well established, Endymion retains most of its original players. These performers now number among the best soloists and chamber musicians in Europe. In June 2009, Endymion celebrated its 30th Birthday at Kings Place with the Sound Census festival, which was not only a reason to promote the ensemble, but a genuine opportunity for Endymion's wonderful musicians to unite and celebrate 30 years of ...Read More