Sting in the tale

With a prestigious award to its credit, a CD release in the offing, and an invitation to collaborate with rock legend Sting, the 12-strong vocal ensemble Stile Antico is flying high. And now, five years after its formation, the group is keen to pass its musical passion and expertise on to A-level students with the launch of an education project.

"They are the new generation of audiences, so it's all about educating them about what's like to go to a concert," said Laura Ashby, one of the group's sopranos. "The idea of the workshops is that they get a chance to learn about the music, a chance to listen, and a chance to sing. So they learn something about how and why the music was written, instead of just singing it."

Laura is the younger sister of twins Kate and Helen Ashby, who formed Stile Antico in 2001 as a holiday project while in their first year at Cambridge University. The three sisters now form the soprano section of the group. Another sister, Emma, sings in the alto section, along with Eleanor Harries and Carris Jones. Tenors Peter Asprey, Andrew Griffiths and Tom Herford, and basses Oliver Hunt, Matthew O'Donovan and David Wright, complete the line-up.

The singers have established a reputation for their fresh, innovative approach to the early choral repertoire and the spontaneity of their performances, drawing praise from critics for their "wonderfully vivid singing" and "perfectly focused and ideally balanced voices". Unusually, they perform without a conductor, which they believe enhances communication with each other and with their audiences.

If this is reminiscent of another, similarly innovative ensemble, the highly-acclaimed I Fagiolini, Kate is quick to acknowledge its influence and the help and advice of its director, Robert Hollingworth.

"We regard him as our mentor," she said, generously.

In 2005, Stile Antico won the Audience Prize in the Early Music Network International Young Artists' Competition, with a performance that was later broadcast on Radio 3's The Early Music Show. This resulted in an invitation to record for the specialist early music label Harmonia Mundi, and their debut CD is due for release in January.

The group has performed extensively throughout the UK and their reputation led to the recent invitation from Sting to form the backing group for his new project exploring songs by the 16th-century composer and lutenist John Dowland.

Kate said: "He asked us to be his backing group. I think everyone was very surprised."

The Education Project has been made possible by National Lottery funding and was launched this week with two workshops involving A-level pupils from Cheney, Cherwell and Wheatley Park schools. The workshops have been designed with the national curriculum in mind and pupils use Stile Antico's own rehearsal techniques to encourage team work, problem solving and communication.

"The primary aim when we first started thinking about the workshops is that we really wanted them to experience what it's like to sing in a small group," said Kate. "A lot of the music we do is religious music, so if they don't go to church they probably haven't heard it, so we wanted to introduce them to that kind of repertoire.

"Also, it's good for general musicianship. It's really good to sing in a small group, especially if you're one to a part. You're completely responsible for your own part, but you have to listen to other people as well."

Each workshop lasts three hours and includes physical and vocal warm-ups, and an exploration of the music and its historical background.

"The idea is that they will take this learning into what they're doing at A level and they'll learn about the era, and how music was affected by political and religious changes," explained Kate. "This period of music is the best era to do that with because there is such a connection between how things were written and what was going on in England. In the future, we hope to work with younger groups and try and show how the schools can carry on with it. So it's not just something that happens for three hours and then forget about it, but something that carries on."

As a climax to this week's workshops, Stile Antico will perform Monteverdi's Missa in ilo tempore at Merton College Chapel tomorrow night and pupils who have attended the workshops will get free tickets to the event - something that Kate believes is an invaluable experience for them.

"I think it's really important that the students who come to do the workshops actually get to see what we do," she said. "There's only six of us who go into the schools, so until you see all 12 of us singing without a conductor and really working together, you don't necessarily get an impression of what the group is about.

"We hope that this will encourage students to be interested in this music, not just for this project, but in the future as well."

To obtain tickets for tomorrow night's concert, email tickets@stilenatico.co.uk or call 07814 600936. For more information about Stile Antico, visit the www.stileantico.co.uk website.