Repertoire

EXAUDI has a large and eclectic repertoire within the universe of new music, but our particular affinities are for its more radical edges: microtonality, complexity, experimental and conceptual aesthetics of different kinds.

Hundreds of works have been written for us and we commission extensively, particularly for our EXPOSURE series. Composers who have written for us include Laurence Crane, Christian Wolff, Michael Oesterle, Claudia Molitor, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Linda Catlin Smith, Lorenzo Pagliei, Michael Finnissy, Aaron Cassidy, Evan Johnson, Leo Chadburn, Jürg Frey, Brian Ferneyhough, Naomi Pinnock, Christopher Fox, Lawrence Dunn, Mikel Urquiza, Alberto Posadas, Isabel Mundry, Matthew Shlomowitz, Amber Priestley, Sylvia Lim, Stefano Gervasoni, Gérard Pesson, Joanna Bailie, Geoff Hannan, Bryn Harrison, James Weeks, Newton Armstrong, Jeff Gavett, Gloria Coates, Alastair Putt, Cassandra Miller, Rytis Mažulis and Andrew Hamilton.

Our preference is for composers of independent, non-conformist outlook, generally working outside the mainstream; we are also strongly committed to supporting the work of younger or emerging composers.

We are a member of PRS Foundation’s Keychange initiative, committing us to gender-balanced programming across our own-promotion concerts and commissions.

We also perform numerous ‘big names’ and classics of 20th and 21st-century music: we have sung much Cage, Feldman, Birtwistle, Finnissy, Sciarrino, Rihm and Nono as well as selected repertoire by such composers as Holliger, Ferneyhough, Furrer, Dusapin, Kagel, Cardew, Castiglioni, Wolff, Berio, Ligeti, Scelsi, Xenakis, Pesson, Poppe, Posadas and Pärt.

Since 2018 we have been proud to work with CoMA on its Partsongs initiative, creating and propagating new experimental repertoire for vocal ensemble, and have given several world premieres of newly-commissioned works from the scheme.

Since our first concert in 2002 we have frequently combined contemporary works with pieces from the medieval, Renaissance and early baroque periods, including music by Machaut, composers of the Ars Subtilior, Josquin, Brumel, Gesualdo, Monteverdi, Marenzio, Gibbons, Tallis, Byrd, Lassus, Victoria, Vicentino, Rore and Schütz. Concerts focused on English madrigals and on the Song of Songs were popular features of our early programming.

In 2012 we launched our Italian Madrigal Book initiative, pairing classic madrigals of the Italian Renaissance with new commissioned works; by 2021 this had resolved into two specific strands: Chromatic Renaissance, exploring the chromatic (and microtonal) avant-garde of Vicentino, Rore, Lassus and others, and a separate focus on Gesualdo’s late madrigals, which we recorded for Winter&Winter in 2019. Future plans in this area include recordings of Chromatic Renaissance and of selected late madrigals of Marenzio.

“…the dazzle of EXAUDI’s vocal pyrotechnics…” 

Financial Times 

See our current repertoire list.