Launched in May of 2005, Ensemble Cinquecento is an exciting Renaissance performance company based in Vienna. Each of the six Cinquecento singers is an exceptional artist- scholar committed to recreating performance practices of the Renaissance era. As youths, some of these singers began their music career with the Vienna Choir Boys, where they were voice students of Madame Sylvia Purcar. 

Ensemble Cinquecento debuted in Salzburg to great acclaim. The group continues concertizing and preparing for their recording debut as featured artists with the prestige British recording label, Hyperion. Among other projects informed by musicological research, Ensemble Cinquecento will revive the music of Jean Richafort in a program that amounts to a "Mass of the Dead for Josquin Desprez". This innovative program includes motets and chansons by Josquin himself, his contemporaries and his pupils embedded into the Requiem-setting by Josquin's student Richafort.

Additional information can be found on their website, www.EnsembleCinquecento.com  

Cinquecento will begin recording the "Via Crucis" program with the Knabenchor Virtuosi in July 2006. Excerpts of this recording will be available for download in Autumn 2006.