Directed by Daniel Blaze, Lady Clare’s Consort comprises eight to twelve regular singers, performing programmes that celebrate the extensive repertoire of the English and European Renaissance.
Since its founding in 2023, the ensemble has given more than 40 concerts across the United Kingdom, performing in many of Cambridge’s prestigious college chapels, as well as churches and venues further afield, including Bolton Abbey Priory, St George’s Cullercoats, St Dominic’s Priory, and Sherborne Abbey.
Highlights of the 2025/26 season began with a performance at the Brecon Choir Festival, presenting a programme marking 500 years since the birth of Palestrina. A tour of The Art of Imitation saw the ensemble return to Bolton Abbey and Burton Leonard, with programmes centred on the parody mass genre. The group was subsequently joined by instrumentalists from the University of Cambridge for the premiere performance of Jeremy Thurlow’s Earthquake in the Soul, a work exploring three of Hildegard of Bingen’s spiritual visions, based on the ‘Earthquake’ Mass attributed to Brumel.
The ensemble’s Christmas concert at St Botolph’s Church, Cambridge, featured responsories by John Sheppard, Thomas Tallis, and William Byrd, alongside Christmas works by Joanna Marsh, Kenneth Leighton, Herbert Howells, and Hieronymus Praetorius’s particularly festive setting of the Magnificat.
In June and August 2026, the ensemble toured a new programme, Songs of Turmoil, exploring music inspired by themes of conflict, turmoil, and change. Spanning composers from Tallis and Gombert to Poulenc and Cecilia McDowall, the programme brought together music from across five centuries. Michael Hudson, Director of the Heritage Concert Series at Bolton Abbey, wrote in his review:
Lady Clare’s Consort proved an impressive and highly accomplished ensemble. Their greatest achievement was perhaps not simply technical: it was their ability to communicate the emotional and spiritual connections between music written across such a vast span of time. Renaissance polyphony, twentieth-century French song and contemporary British
choral writing were brought together not as museum pieces, but as living responses to the same enduring human questions — suffering, conflict, mortality, faith, hope and consolation.
Meet the Consort
Hannah Brooks-Hughes
Maggie Tam
Izzy Theodosius
Daniel Blaze
Music Director
James Kitchingman
UK North Concert Manager
Hugo Williamson
General Manager
Toby Barnett
Samuel Travis
London Concerts Manager
Our 2026 lineup includes:
Sopranos – Fredi Davies, Hannah Brooks-Hughes, Lingling Bao-Smith
Altos – Daniel Blaze, Izzy Theodosius, Joshua Dennis
Tenors – Hugo Williamson, James Kitchingman, Daniel Livermore
Basses – Sam Travis, Toby Barnett, Robert Henderson
Often we collaborate with many musicians and instrumentalists from around the UK. These include the likes of Jeremy Thurlow, Greg May, Mark Zang, and Victoria Longstaff.
