Andrew Parrott and his Taverner Choir & Players have won the 2016 Gramophone Award in the Early Music category for their recording of Western Wind: Mass by John Taverner & Court Music for Henry VIII (AVIE Records AV2352).

This Gramophone Award is something of a first for Andrew Parrott, who founded the Taverner Choir, Consort & Players in 1973. Throughout four decades, they have made over 50 pioneering recordings – several now regarded as “definitive” – of repertoire ranging from Machaut via Tallis, Monteverdi and Purcell to Bach and beyond.

On Western Wind, Andrew Parrott and his Taverner team, including soloists Emily Van Evera and Charles Daniels, turn to music of their namesake alongside works by his exact contemporary King Henry VIII, an exceptionally musical monarch, and a composer of the previous generation, William Cornysh the younger. With Taverner's Western Wind mass as its corner-stone, the recording takes its lead from the secular character of that work and explores a parallel world of courtly vernacular song and instrumental music.

Western Wind represents “The Taverner Consort at their very best,” asserted Gramophone magazine in its “Editor’s Choice” review. “A benchmark performance,” according to BBC Music Magazine, which selected the album as its Choral and Song Choice, The Sunday Times found Western Wind both “rich and intimate.”

The Gramophone Award for Western Wind joins four others that AVIE has garnered as the label approaches its 15th anniversary in 2017: Orlando Gibbons Consorts by the viol quartet Phantasm; J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos by Trevor Pinnock and the European Brandenburg Ensemble; My Life in Music, the absorbing DVD by guitarist Julian Bream; and The French Connection featuring Vivaldi concertos that were popular in Paris in the early 18th-century, by Adrian Chandler and his period-instrument ensemble La Serenissima.

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For further information, image or interview requests, contact Melanne Mueller, melanne@avierecords.com, +44 (0) 20 8698 6933 or +1 917 907 2785.

title: Western Wind: Music by John Taverner & Court Music for Henry VIII
artist: Andrew Parrott, Taverner Choir & Players
price: full price
release date: March 2016
selection number: AV 2352

NOTES TO EDITORS
The Taverner Choir & Players form part of a chameleon-like performing body founded by Andrew Parrott in 1973, which aspires to marry first-rate performance and exploratory scholarship. With over 50 pioneering recordings to its name (from Machaut via Monteverdi to Bach and beyond), the Taverner enterprise, though broad in its reach, remains small-scale in order to retain flexibility and freshness. www.taverner.org

Andrew Parrott keeps baroque and earlier music at the centre of his musical activities (in both conducting and research) but also conducts later orchestral, choral and operatic repertoire, not least new music. A former music director of The London Mozart Players and of The New York Collegium, he finds musical challenges and collaborations far and wide, and is otherwise amply occupied writing up the results of his researches. His most recent book, of collected essays, Composers’ Intentions? Lost traditions of musical performance, was published in 2015, and The Essential Bach Choir (2000) is now in its third print run. www.rayfieldallied.com

Emily Van Evera, best known for stylishly expressive, adventurous singing of earlier repertoires, sings medieval through to new music: folk and lute song, airs de cour and Lieder, baroque opera, Mahler, Vaughan Williams and Ives. She featured in a dramatised concert of Tudor court songs for BBC2 (Circa 1500) and co-devised My Lady Rich, an acclaimed musical portrait of Elizabethan gentlewoman Penelope Rich. www.emilyvanevera.com

Best known in Baroque music, Charles Daniels sings music from 12 centuries in concerts throughout Europe and North America and on many recordings, and has enjoyed working for Taverner since 1982. Married with two daughters, he has latterly found time to write new parts for incomplete works by Purcell and Gesualdo. www.hazardchase.co.uk/artists/charles_daniels

Both Emily and Charles feature in the premiere recording of Bach’s Trauer-Music (‘effortlessly lovely performances... richly rewarding’: BBC R3, 2011) and the Taverner Consort’s 2013 CD of L’Orfeo (‘the most beguiling Monteverdi opera recording for years’: The Times), and Emily in the role of Dido in a BBC-commissioned recording of Dido & Aeneas (‘outstanding, high artistry... very moving’: Rondo).

Independent classical label AVIE Records operates a unique business model based on artist ownership. This model is as robust today as when the label launched in 2002, and allows artists a creative freedom not found at any other label. AVIE maintains offices in the UK and the US. A trail-blazing label, AVIE has been hailed as “adventurous” (The New York Times), “enterprising (Gramophone),” and “admirable” (The Sunday Times). According to leading classical e-tailer ArkivMusic.com, “in a relatively short time, AVIE has put together an impressive catalog.”

AVIE Records released its first albums in April 2002, and over 14 years has amassed over 350 titles with a roster featuring such artists as Andrew Parrott and the Taverner Consort, Apollo’s Fire, Jon Lord, Julian Bream, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, Rachel Barton Pine, Semyon Bychkov, Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert, Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

In addition to five Gramophone Awards, in 2016 AVIE collected its first Grammy® Award for Laura Karpman’s creation ASK YOUR MAMA. Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Monica Huggett, The Dufay Collective and Antonio Meneses have received Grammy® nominations. The label has received numerous other international citations and has charted dozens of albums on the Billboard classical and UK specialist classical charts.
www.Avie-Records.com