Nicholas Routley
Nicholas Routley is a conductor, pianist and composer who founded the Sydney Chamber Choir in 1975 and has shaped its work in Renaissance polyphony and new Australian choral music.
Born in England and educated at Cambridge, he moved to Australia in the mid-1970s and taught for many years in the Department of Music at the University of Sydney. A pupil of Franco Ferrara and Giulini, he has conducted the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and other orchestras in Europe and Asia, and he is musical director of the Sydney University Symphony Orchestra.
With the Sydney Chamber Choir he has recorded Josquin’s Missa Pange lingua and motets on Josquin (TP054), a programme of Ockeghem and his circle on The Ockeghem Legacy (TP141), and later Australian scores on Landscape’s Creatures (TP160), which also includes his own Sicut lilium. Since 1994 he has worked closely with the Song Company on Josquin’s secular music, including The Secular Josquin (TP077).
Nicholas Routley is featured on the following titles
Landscape's Creatures
A collection of recent Australian choral music, mostly by younger composers. It is good to see that choral writing is alive and well in Australia. Each work makes a strong statement, with a variety of choral techniques and styles.
Composer
The Ockeghem Legacy
A celebration of Ockeghem’s life and work. His death prompted many elegies, the most famous being Josquin’s Nimphes des bois. Every composer on this disc is said to have been present at his funeral in 1497.
Credit: Liner Notes
The Secular Josquin
Nicholas Routley brings a lifelong love of Josquin to his work with The Song Company. This programme of short secular songs and motets offers an unusual window on a repertoire less often heard among recordings of the composer.
Clare Maclean: Complete Choral Music
Maclean began her choral life as a singer in this choir, and her writing shows an intimate grasp of its style. The result is gorgeous listening: music inspired by the spiritual, and a distinctive voice amid the noise of contemporary composition.
Credit: Annotations
Josquin
Nicholas Routley has made a speciality of this Renaissance repertoire, and the Sydney Chamber Choir sings it magnificently. Recorded in a small chapel with a perfect acoustic, Josquin's music has rarely sounded so alive.
Credit: Liner Notes
Nicholas Routley also appears on
Crossing a Bridge of Dreams
This CD gathers some of Anne Boyd's most enduring works, mostly from the 1980s. Many pieces reflect her passion for Asian music, heard especially in the flute writing. Premiere performers return for the recording, among them John Harding on viola in My Name Is Tian.
Raft Song at Sunrise: Chamber Music, Vol. 2
Following the best-selling first volume of Ross Edwards’s chamber music (TP051), this disc gathers some of his most enduring works, recorded here for the first time.
An Australian Collection
Nineteen tracks drawn from the Tall Poppies catalogue, chosen to show the range and depth of Australian composition and performance across the label’s first decade.