About
The Brabant Ensemble
The Brabant Ensemble takes its name from the Duchy of Brabant, an area now forming parts of northern Belgium and the southern Netherlands, from which the majority of its repertory is drawn. It was founded in 1998 by Stephen Rice in order to perform the so far under-exposed sacred music of the mid-sixteenth century, and in the past ten years has taken a leading role in the rehabilitation of composers such as Nicolas Gombert, Thomas Crecquillon, and Pierre de Manchicourt, all of whom it has recorded on Hyperion. Its recording of Crecquillon was awarded a ‘Choc du Monde de la Musique’ and shortlisted for the Classic FM Gramophone Awards; that of Gombert featured on the Bestenliste of the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik. The Brabant Ensemble is in international demand on the concert stage, and during 2007–9 is an Ensemble in Residence at the University of Southampton.
Stephen Rice
Stephen Rice is a performer and musicologist based in Oxford, where having taken a doctorate in 2004 with a dissertation on the motets of Nicolas Gombert, he held a Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, 2004–8. As well as founding and directing The Brabant Ensemble, he has conducted extensively in the choral, oratorio and operatic fields, both freelance and as Director of the New Chamber Opera Studio between 1999 and 2004, and as Director of Music at the Oxford church of St Mary Magdalen since 2003. As a scholar he has published on the music of Gombert, Morales, Thomas Tallis, Clemens non Papa, and Josquin Desprez, and on Renaissance music theory. In 2008 he was awarded a three-year Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to be held at the University of Southampton. During this time he is working on the interaction of theory and practice in mid-sixteenth century sacred music, with the collaboration of The Brabant Ensemble and Hyperion Records.
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