About Us
Stile Antico is firmly established as one of the world’s most accomplished and innovative vocal ensembles. Working without a conductor, its twelve members have thrilled audiences on four continents with their fresh, vibrant and moving performances of Renaissance polyphony. Its bestselling recordings have earned accolades including the Gramophone Award for Early Music, Diapason d’or de l’année, Edison Klassiek Award, and Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik. The group has received three Grammy® nominations, and performed live at the 60th Grammy® Awards at Madison Square Garden.
Based in London, Stile Antico has appeared at many of the world’s most prestigious venues and festivals. The group enjoys a particularly close association with Wigmore Hall, and has performed at the BBC Proms, Buckingham Palace, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Cité de la Musique, Luxembourg Philharmonie, Leipzig Gewandhaus, and Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional. Stile Antico is frequently invited to appear at Europe’s leading festivals: highlights include the Antwerp, Bruges, Utrecht and York Early Music Festivals, the Lucerne Easter Festival, and the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival.
Since its 2009 North American debut at the Boston Early Music Festival, Stile Antico has enjoyed frequent tours to the US and Canada. The group performs regularly in Boston and New York, and has appeared at the Ravinia Festival, Washington’s National Cathedral and Library of Congress, Vancouver’s Chan Centre, and in concert series spanning twenty-five US states. Stile Antico has also appeared in Mexico, Colombia, South Korea, Macau, and Hong Kong.
Stile Antico’s performances are often praised for their immediacy, expressive commitment, and their sensitive and imaginative response to text. These qualities arise from the group’s collaborative working style: members rehearse and perform as chamber musicians, each contributing artistically to the musical results. The group is also noted for its compelling programming, which draws out thematic connections between works to shine new light on Renaissance music. In addition to its core repertoire, Stile Antico has premiered works by Kerry Andrew, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Joanna Marsh, John McCabe, Nico Muhly, Giles Swayne, and Huw Watkins. The group’s diverse range of collaborators includes Fretwork, the Folger Consort, Marino Formenti, Lemn Sissay, B’Rock, Rihab Azar, and Sting.
Alongside its concert and recording work, Stile Antico is passionate about sharing its repertoire and working style with the widest possible audience. After many years in residence at Dartington International Summer School, the group now leads courses at the Music Summer School at Gresham’s, and holds regular Come and Sing days open to all. Stile Antico also works extensively with younger singers in university and school settings and with the Rodolfus Foundation, and the support of the charitable Stile Antico Foundation has enabled the group to offer bursaries to talented young ensembles, and to run an annual Youth Consort course. Stile Antico is proud to be a member of the European early music network REMA.
During 2025 Stile Antico celebrates twenty years as a professional ensemble with gala performances at Wigmore Hall, the Boston Early Music Festival, and for AMUZ Antwerpen. The group also marks the five hundredth birthday of Palestrina, the quintessential master of the stile antico, with a series of concerts and the release of a new album for Decca Classics.
Meet the Singers
Unlike other ensembles of its type, Stile Antico has no conductor. Its twelve members work as chamber musicians, rehearsing intensively together to arrive at the group’s musical interpretations, and listening closely and responding to one another’s voices in performance.
Helen Ashby
Kate Ashby
Rebecca Hickey
Cara Curran
Emma Ashby
Rosie Parker
Andrew Griffiths
Benedict Hymas
Jonathan Hanley
Gareth Thomas
James Arthur
Nathan HarrisonOur Name
The term ‘stile antico’, pronounced STEE-lay an-TEE-co, literally means ‘old style’. It was coined during the seventeenth century to describe the style of Renaissance church composition epitomised by the music of Palestrina – polyphonic and imitative in texture, even in rhythm, strictly controlled in its use of dissonance – as opposed to the modern developments in the works of Monteverdi and his contemporaries. Over the centuries, the ‘stile antico’ came to be seen as an ideal of musical purity, and composers such as Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt and Bruckner studied it as part of their training. It is still taught in universities today.
Stile Antico’s repertoire focuses on the astonishingly rich legacy of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century polyphonic composition. It encompasses not only the music of Palestrina and his Italian, Flemish and Spanish contemporaries, but also the fascinating and diverse English school, from the dazzling complexity of the Eton Choirbook to the masterpieces of Taverner, Sheppard, Tallis and Byrd, and the Elizabethan madrigalists. Just as no single voice predominates in the polyphonic style, Stile Antico’s collaborative working method allows all its members to contribute artistically in crafting its performances. The results have been described as ‘wonderfully vivid’ – a direct, personal interpretative approach to the choral repertory, conveying both the beauty and the drama of the finest polyphonic music of the Renaissance.