When The Sixteen take to the stage at The Bridgewater Hall this September, they will be returning to a venue they have known for almost three decades.

Harry Christophers and his celebrated choir first performed here on 13 February 1998, less than 18 months after The Bridgewater Hall’s first concert. Now, 28 years later, they return for another significant moment in the Hall’s history: opening the 30th year of our International Concert Series on Tuesday 29 September 2026.

Their programme, Angel of Peace, brings together more than 800 years of music in an evening of beauty, stillness and reflection, from the visionary songs of Hildegard of Bingen and the soaring polyphony of John Taverner, to Arvo Pärt, Will Todd and contemporary composer Anna Clyne.

From the archive: The Sixteen at The Bridgewater Hall

The Sixteen’s first Bridgewater Hall concert began a relationship with the venue that has continued across almost three decades. That first programme already showed the breadth of music that has become so closely associated with Harry Christophers and The Sixteen. It brought together works by John Sheppard and John Tavener, before culminating in Duruflé’s Requiem.

Among the music performed were Sheppard’s Audivi vocem and Libera nos I, alongside Tavener’s Leroy Kyrie and the Gloria from Missa Corona Spinea. Since that first appearance, Harry Christophers and the choir have returned many times, bringing repertoire spanning centuries of choral music to Manchester audiences.

Most recently, they appeared in the International Concert Series on 30 September 2024 with Monteverdi’s monumental Vespers of 1610. Their November 2022 appearance brought Parry’s deeply moving Songs of Farewell to the Hall as part of An Old Belief, a Choral Pilgrimage programme whose themes included peace and unity, ideas which resonate strongly with the music they will bring to Manchester this September.

Nearly three decades after that first concert in 1998, their return to begin the 30th year of the International Concert Series feels particularly fitting.

More than 800 years of music

Angel of Peace travels across centuries, but rather than feeling like a collection of separate works, the programme has been conceived as a continuous musical journey.

It begins with the extraordinary voice of Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th-century abbess, writer and composer. Her works O viridissima virga and Ave, generosa sit alongside two magnificent 16th-century antiphons by John Taverner, Gaude plurimum and O splendor gloriae.

Three works by Arvo Pärt bring us into a very different sound world. His distinctive music is built around space, clarity and stillness, qualities heard here in Tribute to Caesar, Da pacem Domine and Magnificat.

The programme takes its name from Will Todd’s I shall be an angel of peace, a setting of words by Cardinal John Henry Newman for choir and solo violin. The Sixteen are joined by violinist Sarah Sexton, whose instrument becomes another voice within the ensemble.

Completing the journey is Anna Clyne’s Orbits, a contemporary companion to Todd’s work that brings the programme firmly into the present day.

Together, these very different pieces speak to shared ideas of peace, acceptance, contemplation and reassurance.

Angel of Peace travelled around the UK as The Sixteen’s 2025 Choral Pilgrimage, earning considerable acclaim along the way.

Following a performance at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, Bachtrack awarded the concert five stars, describing how Sarah Sexton’s “silvery violin line seemed to float ethereally above the wash of choral sound” in Todd’s title work. The review praised the way Christophers and The Sixteen connected music separated by hundreds of years, ultimately describing the programme as “a timeless sequence of glorious and radiant music.”

At Croydon Minster, Thoroughly Good called the concert “a sublime mix of ancient and modern”, highlighting the way apparently distant musical worlds are drawn together.

Another five-star response followed at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London, where A Young(ish) Perspective described the experience as “timely, timeless, and quietly transformative.”

Planet Hugill was struck by the Renaissance music, praising the “gloriously rich tapestry of polyphony” created by the choir in Taverner’s Gaude plurimum.

An evening of musical stillness

There is something particularly compelling about hearing this music in The Bridgewater Hall. Some of the works fill the space with intricate layers of voices; others achieve their effect through restraint and silence. Hildegard’s soaring medieval melodies lead into Pärt’s meditative sound world, while Taverner’s richly woven polyphony sits alongside music written within our own century.

No specialist knowledge of choral music is required. At its heart, Angel of Peace is an invitation simply to listen. Across its 800-year span, the programme returns again and again to ideas that remain strikingly relevant: peace, hope, acceptance and the possibility of finding stillness amid uncertainty.

There could hardly be a more appropriate way to open an anniversary season.

The International Concert Series has been at the heart of The Bridgewater Hall since its earliest years, bringing leading orchestras, ensembles, conductors, and soloists from around the world to Manchester.

As the Series begins its 30th year, we welcome back artists whose own history with the Hall reaches almost to the beginning. In February 1998, The Sixteen began their Bridgewater Hall story with music spanning the centuries. On Tuesday 29 September 2026, Harry Christophers and his choir return to do much the same again, and to open the next chapter.