Zephyrus is a non-profit vocal ensemble based in Charlottesville, Virginia, and dedicated to the performance of music from the medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque eras. Under the guidance of its director, Paul Walker, Zephyrus presents several major performances each year in Virginia and the surrounding area. It has also served in the past as choir-in-residence at two English Cathedrals, Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford (August 2000) and Ely Cathedral (July 2005), where the singers sang daily services. In August 2004 Zephyrus sang the chorus parts in a semi-staged performance of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas as part of the Staunton Music Festival.
Zephyrus has recorded three CDs. Our most recent CD, of Flemish music from the Renaissance and featuring Jacob Obrecht’s Missa Sub tuum presidium, was released in January 2005.
Since its founding in 1991 by Dr. Walker, Zephyrus has devoted itself to bringing the treasures of early music to a wider audience. The music with which Zephyrus began, and which still forms the heart of its expertise today, is the sixteenth-century repertory of sacred music. Over the years we have performed works by a great many of the major composers of this era, including Josquin des Prez, Jacobus Clemens non Papa, Nicolaus Gombert, Adrian Willaert, Cristobal Morales, G. P. da Palestrina, Orlande de Lassus, and the Englishmen John Taverner, Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, and Thomas Thompkins. Our two previous CDs, featuring motets for the Christmas season, also focus on the works of these composers.
In more recent years we have branched out into both earlier and later repertories. Examples of the former include performances of Jacob Obrecht’s Missa Sub tuum presidium, John Browne’s O Maria salvatoris mater from the Eton Choirbook, and works by Johannes Ockeghem and Guillaume Dufay. Our explorations of Baroque music have led us to sing Giacomo Carissimi’s Jephthe, Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Virgine of 1610, Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s In nativitatem Domini Canticum, H. 416, Henry Purcell’s Come, Ye Sons of Art, Handel’s Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline, J. S. Bach’s Lutheran Mass in F, and many works by Heinrich Schütz, Johann Hermann Schein, Giovanni Gabrieli, and others. A list of our major concerts since 1992 can be found below. (Under Construction)
The singers of Zephyrus come from a wide variety of academic and professional backgrounds, but share a love of chamber singing and a commitment to excellence in performance. Most of them study privately with Sally Sanford, a colleague of Dr. Walker’s who has a degree in Early Music Performance from Stanford and comes to Charlottesville regularly from her home outside Boston for this purpose. Ms. Sanford also provides group coaching and has produced all three of Zephyrus's CDs.
Zephyrus is operated solely by its members and relies on tax-deductible contributions from area patrons to assist with its expenses. For more information about the ensemble please contact Dr. Walker at (434) 293-5339 or pmw6q@virginia.edu).
About the Director
Paul Walker holds an MM degree in Organ Performance from the University of Kansas and a PhD in Musicology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has taught musicology at Yale University and the University of Chicago, and he is now Associate Professor of Music and director of Early Music Performance at the University of Virginia. He has written extensively on the history of fugue and fugal theory, including all of the articles on fugue and related topics for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians II (2000), and his book Theories of Fugue from the Age of Josquin to the Age of Bach (University of Rochester Press, 2000) received in May 2002 the William H. Scheide Prize from the American Bach Society for the outstanding contribution to Bach scholarship during the previous two years.