Cappella Nova was founded in 1982 by Alan Tavener and Rebecca Tavener, and has since built a reputation as the national champion of Scotland’s early choral music. In 2008 the choir, with the support of the Scottish Arts Council, commissioned Craig Armstrong to compose a piece of music to set to the poetry of Robert Burns.
The result, entitled Red, took the single line ‘My love is like a red, red rose’, and crystallised it, as Armstrong says, into ‘a meditation on the beauty and fragility hidden within Robert Burns’ words’. It was performed in 2009 as part of Cappella Nova’s Homecoming Scotland concert, The Word and the Song.
