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Paul McCreesh

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Paul McCreesh was born in 1960 and is an English conductor. He began as a cellist and in 1981 took his bachelor's degree in music at the University of Manchester. In 1982 he founded the Gabrieli Consort and Players, of which he is artistic director. With them he has performed in concert halls and at festivals all over the world. He was also artistic director of the Wratislavia Cantans Festival in Wrocław and founded the Brinkburn Festival in England. In 2005 he received an honorary doctorate from Loughborough University.

Music and breakthrough

McCreesh made his name with music from the Renaissance and the Baroque, above all from Venice. His breakthrough was the 1990 album A Venetian Coronation 1595, a reconstruction of the coronation of the doge Marino Grimani, which won a Gramophone Award. He is known for such liturgical reconstructions, in which music is presented in the context of a church service, with the ringing of bells as background sound. From 1993 he recorded extensively for Deutsche Grammophon, and in 2011 he founded the label Winged Lion.

Influence

Later he also worked with symphony orchestras and conducted operas by Handel, Gluck and Mozart. In 2020 BBC Music Magazine chose his recording of Purcell's King Arthur as recording of the year.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to A Venetian Coronation 1595. Notice how the choirs and the brass evoke the space of a large church, and how the music belongs to a ceremony.

Discography

Studio albums

Categories: Artists