Piers Adams - Red Priest

<body bgcolor="#3399ff"> <p><span class="bigyellow">Red Priest</span> is one of the major success stories on the international Early Music scene today. Named after the flame-haired priest, Antonio Vivaldi, this extraordinary English ensemble has re-defined the art of baroque music performance, combining the fruits of extensive research with swashbuckling virtuosity, creative re-composition, heart-on-sleeve emotion and compelling stagecraft. The group performs largely from memory, allowing an operatic level of freedom and interaction, and its highly imaginative <a title="programmes" href="redprogrammes.html" target="_self">programmes </a>are drawn from myriad baroque sources to create a kaleidoscopic range of moods and colours.</p> <p>Formed in 1997, Red Priest now gives over 50 concerts a year in some of the most prestigious festivals and venues in Europe and the USA (see below), together with Radio and TV broadcasts and <a title="online CD sales" href="../common/recordings/index.html" target="_self">CD recordings </a>. Its debut disc, Priest on the Run, was released in 1998 to high  and somewhat alarmed  acclaim from the press, and the ensemble has now embarked on a 5-year recording project with <a title="Dorian Recordings" href="HTTP://www.dorian.com" target="_blank">Dorian Recordings </a>, USA, commencing with their baroque-horror epic, Nightmare in Venice.</p> <p>International music critics have described the Red Priest style as 'electrifying', 'sheer daring', 'immaculately forged', 'sonically supercharged', 'brilliant and inspired', 'deliciously twisted' (see <a href="redreviews/redreviews.html" target="_self">press comments </a>) - but the group's extravagantly baroque ethos is perhaps best summed up in the words of English musicologist and broadcaster George Pratt:<i> </i><b>"If nobody goes over the top, how will we know what lies on the other side?"</b></p> <div align="center"> <h3>You are here because your browser doesn't support frames - sorry.</h3> </div> </body>