The Magdalena Consort has recently been given an enthusiastic reception in the Early Music Days festival in Sopron, Hungary, for a performance of the 'Ages of Man' programme. The audience responded warmly to the concert which involved them in a musical journey through the stages of a human life, from the opening wedding cantata through meditations on marriage, birth, baptism, illness and death to a cantata celebrating the believer's hope of the world to come.

The Magdalena Consort was launched in the UK in the second week of June with a concert before an invited audience in the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield. We performed extracts from the Ages of Man and celebrated in the cloisters afterwards with pudding wine and our signature madeleines.

We were delighted that several guests offered their support for our work by joining the newly-founded Bach Family.

The Magdalena Consort gave its inaugural concert in the prestigious Festival of Santiago de Compostela in North West Spain. The team of singers was Gillian Keith, Daniel Taylor, James Gilchrist, and Peter Harvey, who also directed. The players, led by Matthew Truscott, were a very distinguished group, and their enthusiasm was key to the tremendous reception the performance received. Some of the concert can be heard on this website (see 'Magdalena Music Player' on the home page). The group was since been enthusiastically received in the 'Bach town' of Arnstadt,as part of the MDR 'Musiksommer' festival in Germany. Appropriately for a young ensemble performing for the first time in what is in some ways a spiritual home, the programme consisted of two cantatas on the theme of baptism (BWV 7: 'Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam', and BWV 37: 'Wer da gläubet und getauft wird', together with the Mass in G major, BWV 236. The soloists on this occasion were Gillian Keith, Robin Blaze, James Gilchrist and Peter Harvey.