The leading contemporary music and music-theatre ensemble in the North of England, Psappha was formed in 1991 by its Artistic Director, Tim Williams, and has built up a repertoire of over 150 works and a reputation for outstanding technical and interpretational ability.

Psappha has promoted an annual series of concerts in its home city of Manchester since 1991, and in Liverpool since 1998. The ensemble has also been invited to perform at many leading UK music festivals, notably Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Huddersfield, Bath, Buxton, Oxford, St. Magnus Festival in Orkney, the ISCM World Music Days in Manchester and the Henze Festival at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank. Psappha also gave the first ever public performance at Stormont Castle in Belfast.

In June 2000 Psappha, in collaboration with Muziektheater Transparant, gave the highly acclaimed première of a new music-theatre work Mr. Emmet Takes a Walk specially written by Peter Maxwell Davies with direction and libretto by David Pountney. Following a tour of Scotland, Psappha gave a performance at The Lowry in Salford which won the Manchester Evening News Theatre Award for Opera 2000.

Psappha is becoming as sought after abroad as in the UK, and in Autumn 2000 the group undertook highly successful tours of Australia, America and France. As artists in residence at the Barossa Festival in Australia they provided a varied programme of concert work and music-theatre, including staged performances of Maxwell Davies’ Miss Donithorne’s Maggot with Jane Manning and Eight Songs for a Mad King with Kelvin Thomas. The American tour in November 2000 featured Caltabiano’s Marrying the Hangman in New York, San Francisco and Sacramento, and in October Psappha gave the French première of Mr Emmet Takes a Walk in Paris. In 2001, Psappha gave the Belgian première of Mr Emmet in Antwerp in March, and the Dutch première in Rotterdam in April. Future plans include tours to Spain, Portugal, France and Norway.

To date Psappha has released four CDs with the fifth available in the autumn of 2002 (featuring the works of Gordon McPherson) . Psappha is regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and the ensemble consistently receives glowing reviews for its recordings and concerts.

Since its inception Psappha has commissioned works by leading composers including Peter Maxwell Davies, Anthony Gilbert, Simon Parkin, Gordon McPherson, Paul Max Edlin, Paul Newland and Camden Reeves. Psappha has also given the first UK performances and premières of works by composers such as Steven Mackey, Karen Tanaka, Wang Sue-Ya, Ronald Caltabianio, Rebecca Saunders, George Perle, David Froom, Theo Verbey, Cornelius de Bondt, Piers Hellawell, Marc Yeats and Scott Kennedy-French.

Education projects are an important part of Psappha’s schedule – the ensemble has worked with a varied age range from secondary school to university post-graduate students. In 1995 Psappha was awarded the Swatch City Life Award for the Best Concert Series and Education Work of the year. July 2000 saw the successful conclusion of Psappha’s largest project to date, based at Salford’s Lowry Centre and involving 120 children from all over the North West. In 2001 Psappha gave a week of education work in schools in Paris in January, and a project in Liverpool Schools based on the Spring Series in February. Composers Workshops took place at Leeds University and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama in March, and the University of Manchester Music Department in May.