Ensemble Development Bursary 2026-2028: ANON
We are delighted to support ANON as the holders of the 2026-2028 Stile Antico Ensemble Bursary.
ANON will receive coaching, professional mentoring and financial assistance throughout the two years of the scheme. It is the third group to hold the Ensemble Bursary, and succeeds The Bruegel Consort, which worked with Stile Antico in developing new programmes and its performance profile, and the inaugural holders Fount & Origin, who recorded their first album for Delphian during their tenure.
ANON’s founder Thomas Wilson writes:
We’re immensely grateful to Stile Antico for choosing us as recipients of the Ensemble Bursary, and really excited to work with them over the next couple of years. Stile Antico have set the standard in early music performance for ages ,and having already experienced first-hand how invaluable their mentoring can be, we couldn’t be more excited about working with and learning from them.
Anonymous music raises all sorts of questions. Who gets remembered? Who gets left out? Why do some names survive while others disappear? What do we hear differently when there’s no composer’s reputation telling us in advance whether we’re supposed to like it? Anonymity is such a wonderfully complicated phenomenon. A piece by Josquin, Byrd or Palestrina arrives already dressed for dinner. An anonymous motet has to justify its own existence. And very often, it does so magnificently.
ANON’s next concert ‘Secrets in Gold’ explores anonymity in the delightfully paradoxical choirbooks of Petrus Alamire, where names, identity and status are everything, but where more than half of the surviving music exists without attribution. We are also developing an online lecture-recital about Josquin. Or rather… music that was once thought to be by Josquin but is now considered anonymous instead.
We’re hugely grateful to Stile Antico, the Stile Antico Foundation, and everyone whose generosity has made this bursary possible. It means a great deal to have this support at such an exciting stage in ANON’s development, and we’re really grateful for the chance to share our work with a bigger audience.
About ANON
ANON was founded by Thomas Wilson in 2023 to explore the fascinating and still largely unexplored world of anonymous music – pieces whose composers’ names have been forgotten, deliberately suppressed, or never written down in the first place.
The ensemble is a group of twelve singers, which is sometimes expanded for larger programmes and repertoire. Most of its work to date has been in Lincoln Cathedral, where the group has given several concerts, lecture recitals and other projects, including ‘Nocturn’— a collaboration with artist Richard Hall exploring anonymity, identity and absence. Over the next few years, ANON plans several new concerts, and a series of miniature documentary videos examining some of its most fascinating finds in more detail.
To learn more about ANON and to listen to the group sing, please visit the ANON website.