Antony Pitts was born in 1969 and sang as a boy in the Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace. He was an Academic Scholar and later Honorary Senior Scholar at New College, Oxford and graduated in 1990 with First-Class Honours in Music. In the same year he founded the ensemble TONUS PEREGRINUS, and in 2004 won a Cannes Classical Award for their debut Naxos CD of Arvo Pärt's Passio (also a UK No.1 and The Gramophone "Editor's Choice"). Naxos have since released a series of key milestones of Western music performed by TONUS PEREGRINUS under his direction: the first polyphony and music in four parts - LEONIN, PEROTIN Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral, the first-ever opera - Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion, the first polyphonic settings of the Mass and the Passion - The Mass of Tournai, the first new sounds of the Renaissance - Sweet Harmony - masses and motets by John Dunstaple, and a brand-new realization of the first English hymnbook from 1623 - Hymns and Songs of the Church including six of his own hymns. TONUS PEREGRINUS's recording of Antony's Seven Letters and other sacred choral music is available on Hyperion (also an "Editor's Choice" in The Gramophone).

Antony joined the BBC in 1992, and became a Senior Producer for BBC Radio 3. He was awarded the Radio Academy BT Award for Facing the Radio (1995) - one of the first live interactive experiments on the internet. He has developed an extremely personal style of "heterophonic radio" which emerged for the first time in a BBC Radio 3 Between the Ears piece, Virtual Strangers (1996). For the turn of the Millennium he devised The Unfinished Symphony - an 18-hour history of Western music. He has been nominated seven times for the Prix Italia for Chromatic Fantasy (1994); Gould, Tobacco, Bach (1998); Tabula rasa (1998); Credo: The Future of Music (2000); A Parisian in Paradise (2002); The Rise and Fall of the English Cadence (2002); and in 2004 he was awarded the Prix Italia Radio Music prize for A Pebble in the Pond. Antony has also presented series on the music of Olivier Messiaen, Guillaume de Machaut, Hildegard of Bingen and Arvo Pärt, and has guest-presented BBC Radio 4's Something Understood. In 2004 he devised and produced A Passion 4 Radio in which all four Gospel accounts of the Passion were presented in parallel. He gained some notoriety in 2005 for resigning his BBC Senior Producer post partly in order to be able to speak freely to the media about the ill-advised broadcast of Jerry Springer the Opera; he has since founded Golden Radio, and its first independent production was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in March 2006 entitled Not in my name.

Antony has been composing since he can remember and his music has been performed across Europe and in the USA, including Wigmore Hall and Westminster Cathedral in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and the Philharmonie Kammermusiksaal in Berlin. He has been commissioned by the Berlin Radio Choir, Cambridge Voices, the Clerks' Group, European Chamber Opera, King's College London, New Chamber Opera, Peter Johnson Entertainments, Schola Cantorum of Oxford, the Swingle Singers, and the Choir of Westminster Cathedral, as well as the Edington Festival of Music within the Liturgy, the Kingston-upon-Thames Festival of the Voice, the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music, and the Oxford Festival of Contemporary Music. Faber Music selected two of his scores to launch their New Choral Works series, and also publish The Naxos Book of Carols and his 40-voice motet XL (a companion piece for Tallis's Spem in alium) - released on Harmonia Mundi. Antony teaches composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London where he is Senior Lecturer in Creative Technology.


1969
born in Farnborough, Kent

1978-81
treble in Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace

1980-86
Tiffin Boys' School, Kingston-upon-Thames

1982
co-founded progressive rock group Room 33

1987-91
New College, Oxford

1988
Academic Scholarship (for joint top result in Moderations)

1989
Short Music for a French Audience commissioned for Florilege vocale, Tours
Difficult Music for an American Audience commissioned by Schola Cantorum of Oxford

1990
founded performing ensemble Tonus Peregrinus
B.A. Music (1st-Class Honours)
Honorary Senior Scholarship
Anna's Rapid Eye Movement commissioned by New Chamber Opera

1991
O my people (Antiphon for Good Friday) commissioned by Schola Cantorum of Oxford

1992
Secretary to Adrian Jack, BBC Radio 3 Music Department

1993
Production Assistant to Misha Donat, BBC Radio 3 Music Department
Mind over Matter commissioned by European Chamber Opera
freelance music reviewer on BBC World Service
part of Anna's Rapid Eye Movement featured on Unknown Public #3

1994
Trainee Producer, BBC Radio 3 Music Department
presented Composer of the Week: Olivier Messiaen
Adrian Jack's Chromatic Fantasy (nominated for the Prix Italia)
Producer, BBC Radio 3 Music Department
Thou knowest my lying down featured on Unknown Public #5
In the year that King Uzziah died commissioned by Paul Ayres

1995
The Great Thanksgiving with Alan Walker
Fairest Isle with Roderick Swanston
The English Cadence with Jeremy Summerly (Radio 3 Trail of the Year)
devised Facing the Radio live interactive experiment on radio and internet

1996
Fairest Isle Time Capsule (for broadcast in 2045) with Jeremy Summerly
A Series of Intervals with Adrian Jack
By the waters of Babylon with Alan Walker
recorded Machaut's Mass in Rheims Cathedral using Sensaura technology
presented Composer of the Week: Machaut with Daniel Leech-Wilkinson
awarded Radio Academy BT Award 1996 for Facing the Radio
Out of the Depths (part one) commissioned by Matthew Owens and the Oxford Festival of Contemporary Music
Out of the Depths (part two) commissioned by Paul Ayres
For Ockeghem with the Hilliard Ensemble, Bob Peck
presented Composers of the Week: Hildegard of Bingen & Arvo Part
wrote Virtual Strangers in collaboration with Richard Gaskell, Jonathan Finn
Machaut Mass released on CD by Naxos & chosen by David Fallows as his Critic's Choice of 1997 in Gramophone (March, 1988): "thoroughly fresh-sounding"
Sacred Music from the Low Countries with Jeremy Summerly

1997
Producer, BBC Radio Classical Music
co-ordinated Ockeghem 500th anniversary celebrations on BBC Radio 3
For Ockeghem released on CD in Hilliard Live series
From the Diary of a Fly by Adrian Jack
The Seven Gates of Jerusalem with Jeremy Summerly (nominated by the BBC for a Sony Award, and the subject of an academic paper by Dr Ronit Seter in 2004)
Musica Deo sacra music of the English Church with Jeremy Summerly
contributor to The Gramophone & Unknown Public's Explorations
The Sound of Musicke with John Drinkwater
devised Counting Aloud with Verity Sharp (nominated by the BBC for a Sony Award)
devised The Four Last Things with Alan Walker
variation for the Passacaglia on Themes of Joanne Johnson commissioned by Paul Ayres
In Country Churches with Adrian Jack

1998
devised Gould, Tobacco, Bach with Matt Thompson (nominated for the Prix Italia)
Letter from Iceland with Jeremy Summerly
devised Hildegard 2000
Producer, Arts & Classical Music
Sounding the Century documentary series Settling the Score:
The End of Time with John Drinkwater,
Tabula Rasa with Jeremy Summerly (nominated by the BBC for a Sony Award and for the Prix Italia),
New Adventures with Julian Anderson
BCAD (I'll be Bach) commissioned by the Swingle Singers
The Harmonic Series with Adrian Jack

1999
Sounding the Century documentary Of Sound Mind with Christopher Cook
guest lecturer, Royal Academy of Music
guest lecturer, Brabants Conservatory
A Thousand Years commissioned by James O'Donnell and the Choir of Westminster Cathedral
Credo (symbolum super voces musicales) commissioned by the Clerks' Group
Senior Producer, BBC Classical Music
launched new programme Late Junction on BBC Radio 3
devised The Unfinished Symphony - 18-hour history of Western music broadcast to critical and popular acclaim on New Year's Eve, 1999 (nominated by the BBC for a Sony Award)
ending with The Future of Music: Credo (nominated for the Prix Italia)

2000
A Partridge in a Pear-Tree in a CD-Player commissioned by Faber Music
Credo (symbolum super voces musicales) premiered by the Clerks' Group in Wigmore Hall, London
devised Je, Guillaume - an evening on BBC Radio 3 celebrating the 700th anniversary of the birth of Guillaume de Machaut (including a remix of Virtual Strangers)
devised A Parisian in Paradise - a Between the Ears collage of Messiaen's music and the sounds of Paris in the 1940s for BBC Radio 3
BCAD (I'll be Bach) premiered by the Swingle Singers in the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam
A Thousand Years premiered by the Choir of Westminster Cathedral
Senior Producer, BBC Radio 3

2001
Last Night nominated by the BBC for a Sony Award
Amen premièred by the Oxford Camerata
Adoro Te published by Faber Music
External Reviewer for Royal Academy of Music's BMus Review
A Partridge in a Pear-Tree in a CD-Player published by Faber Music
devised & produced Self-Portrait From Behind for BBC Radio 3
Academic Studies Lecturer, Royal Academy of Music
devised & created fast forwards for Unknown Public Radio

2002
devised Homecoming - a Between the Ears for BBC Radio 3
remixed A Parisian in Paradise for BBC Radio 3 (director's cut shortlisted at the Prix Italia)
XL commissioned by the Berlin Radio Choir
devised & produced The Rise and Fall of the English Cadence with Jeremy Summerly for BBC Radio 3 (nominated for the Prix Italia)
devised Golden Rule for BBC Radio 3
recorded & produced Surviving Amsterdam with Christopher Cook for BBC Radio 3's Going Dutch season
fast forwards available as free CD with the London Review of Books
I AM Alpha and Omega commissioned by Cambridge Voices

2003
I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life commissioned by Peter Johnson Entertainments
I AM the True Vine commissioned by Schola Cantorum of Oxford
St Pancras Canticles (Magnificat & Nunc dimittis) commissioned by the Choir of St Pancras for the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music in May 2003
Arvo Pärt's Passio released on CD by Naxos
XL premièred by the Berlin Radio Choir in the Philharmonie Kammermusiksaal, Berlin
The Mass of Tournai released on CD by Naxos
The Twinkling of an Eye commissioned by The King's School, Canterbury
The Naxos Book of Carols released on CD by Naxos

2004
recorded Organum from Notre-Dame - a cathedral-in-progress and Sweet Harmony - masses & motets by John Dunstaple with TONUS PEREGRINUS for Naxos
produced A Pebble in the Pond with Eva Hoffman and Michael Zev Gordon for BBC Radio 3 (awarded a Prix Italia in September 2004)
devised & produced A Passion 4 Radio for BBC Radio 3 (nominated for Sandford St Martin Trust Award)
St Pancras Canticles (Magnificat & Nunc dimittis) broadcast on Choral Evensong
mixed Walking against the Wind with Bonnie Greer for BBC Radio 3
The Naxos Book of Carols published by Faber Music
recorded Hymnes and Songs of the Church with TONUS PEREGRINUS for Naxos
devised & produced A Strange Eventful History with Alan Walker for BBC Radio 3 (nominated for Sony Award)

2005
resigned from the BBC over the broadcast of Jerry Springer - the Opera
devised & produced One Equal Music? (final origination as a member of BBC staff)
remixed A Passion 4 Radio for BBC Radio 3
XL published by Faber Music
recording of XL by Simon Halsey and Rundfunkchor Berlin released on Harmonia Mundi (France) in the summer of 2005 - HMC801873
TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of sacred choral music by Antony Pitts - Seven Letters - released on Hyperion (Editor's Choice, The Gramophone)
TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Leonin & Perotin - Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral released on Naxos (nominated for first-ever BBC Music Magazine Awards)

2006
appointed Senior Lecturer in Creative Technology at the Royal Academy of Music in London
première of A Still Small Voice with 270 performers of all ages to launch the Festival of the Voice
composed & produced Not in my name with Gary Watt for BBC Radio 3 (first Golden Radio production)
TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion released on Naxos
Virtual Strangers reunion and first live gig in The Scoop opposite Tower Bridge - ten years after the seminal recording for BBC Radio 3's Between the Ears
TONUS PEREGRINUS recording of Hymns and Songs of the Church released on Naxos
Before Abraham was, I AM - the final motet in the series of The "I AM" Sayings of Jesus - commissioned for performance at the Edington Music Festival and live broadcast on BBC Radio 3's Choral Evensong in August 2006

2007
première of If music be the food of love at The Athenæum, London
première of The Peace of Jerusalem in Israel
première of the complete motet cycle The "I AM" Sayings of Jesus at the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music

2008
release of Alpha and Omega on Hyperion (CDA67668)
première of Jerusalem-Yerushalayim by TONUS PEREGRINUS at Opera Fringe, Downpatrick, Northern Ireland
première of Thou wast present as on this day by The Clerks on BBC Radio 3's In Tune