Alan Tavener

Choral conductor Alan Tavener has recorded much Scottish music with his durable group Cappella Nova. He has also toured widely and recorded with the Strathclyde University Chamber Choir, which he formed. Tavener was born in Glasgow in 1957. He attended the University of Oxford, studying music, and Scotland's University of Strathclyde, where his field was educational research; he examined the benefits of group singing, focusing specifically on individuals with dementia. At Strathclyde, he became director of music, where he led a wide range of student choral, orchestral, and small-ensemble groups. Among them was the Strathclyde University Chamber Choir, which he formed and has continued to conduct. The group has toured Europe and beyond, appeared on the radio, and given the premieres of numerous contemporary works, including 11 of composer James MacMillan's Strathclyde Motets. The group also released an album of Scottish Romantic choral songs. Tavener is perhaps best known as the director of the vocal ensemble Cappella Nova, which he founded in 1982 with Rebecca Tavener; he remained its director as of the early 2020s. The group specializes in Scottish music and has accumulated a large repertory from the medieval, Renaissance, and contemporary eras. In 1993, Cappella Nova released the album Sacred Music for Mary, Queen of Scots on the ASV label. This group, too, has focused on MacMillan's music, issuing four albums devoted to him of its total of about 15 as of 2022. One of those was Tenebrae: New Choral Music by James MacMillan (2007); that album appeared on the Linn label, and Tavener and Cappella Nova have released several more albums there, including Tavener Conducts Tavener (2015), featuring music by the unrelated John Tavener. Tavener also conducts the Scottish Plainsong Choir (an open-access community choir associated with Cappella Nova) and two church choirs, and he leads classes and choirs at the University of Strathclyde's Centre for Lifelong Learning. He leads workshops and classes for various organizations, including the Association of British Choral Directors and the Moscow Conservatory. In 2021, Tavener and Cappella Nova released the album Sir James MacMillan: Consecration on Linn.
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