About Chalice Consort

Chalice Consort collaborates with early music scholars and musicians in helping little-known works from the Renaissance and early Baroque eras become more widely appreciated by the modern music-loving public. The Consort pays special attention to the verbal texts and to the music's rhetorical force, as well as to acoustics. Its performances also take into account the various concepts of stylistic decorum that were strongly articulated by humanist writers in the Renaissance and provide an essential part of the context in which these repertoires were composed, performed, and first appreciated. Chalice Consort aims to communicate the emotional power of this music to modern listeners.

You can read about our humble beginnings here.

Chalice Consort is honored to have received rave reviews from San Francisco Classical Voices about our performances:

"Chalice Consort...took on the challenging task of presenting an all a cappella program of music from Renaissance Spain, and succeeded magnificently. I say 'magnificent' due to the chorus' consistently accurate tuning and the beautiful pure-voiced and appropriate choral tone of the soprano section." You can read the full review here.

"The Chalice Consort was heavenly indeed, singing with perfect intonation and beautifully balanced sound." You can read the full review here.

Highlights:

April 7, 2010 - Chalice Consort successfully produced the first ever Early Music Mining Conference (EMMC), now called Chalice Consort Early Music Conference. The all-star panel of luminary music directors from the UK included Jeremy Summerly (Royal Academy of Music, London); David Trendell (King's College, London) and Geoffrey Webber (Caius and Gonville College, Cambridge). The winner of the first ever EMMC was Dr. Peter Poulos (U. of Cincinnati) with his discovery and edition of Quae est ista composed by Simone Molinaro (c. 1570-1636).

November 12-14, 2011 - Chalice Consort premiered "Music for Meditation and Devotion by Simone Molinaro" (c. 1570-1636) in the bay area, discovered and edited by Dr. Peter Poulos, who graciously attended the concerts with his lovely wife, Susan.

Chalice Consort will be soon calling for newly discovered and unpublished scores submitted through the Early Music Scholars' Competition (EMSC). The five selected scores that complement the focal piece of the subsequent Chalice Consort Early Music Conference (CCEMC) will be presented at the CCEMC in April 2012. You can read about the EMSC here.

Chalice Consort is a project of Community Initiatives. We are grateful to the following individuals for being our first donors:

Anonymous (2)
Curtis Feeny
Kevin & Julia Hartz
Alex & Jilai Osadzinski
Jennifer Owen
Robert Simon & Nicole Andrews Simon