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QuintEssential is in origin a five-part wind ensemble (two cornetts, three sackbuts) with keyboard continuo, formed in 1993: Quint is a generic term used to denote a fifth part. Since its formation QuintEssential has performed extensively in Britain, toured throughout Europe (Spain, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, Slovenia, Poland, Bulgaria, Finland, Switzerland, Italy), as well as an unforgettable visit to Colombia, South America.

QuintEssential has featured on the three highly successful recordings of South American seventeenth-century polyphony by Ex Cathedra on Hyperion, as well as discs of sixteenth-century German polyphony with the choir of Sidney Sussex College Cambridge and a selection of music from the Henry VIII Manuscript with vocal group Alamire, under the direction of David Skinner on Obsidian Records. QuintEssential recorded an anniversary disc for Chandos Records, ‘Eliza is the fayrest Queene’, marking four hundred years since the death of the death of Elizabeth I, while QuintEssential’s first CD, ‘In Venetia’, a collection of seventeenth-century Venetian instrumental polyphonic music, has been re-released by Meridian Records.

London Concert Choir concerts:

San Marco Cathedral, Venice
Monteverdi: Vespers of 1610
(17 March 2016)