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Since our formation in 1979 from a group of outstanding National Youth Orchestra students, Endymion has built a secure reputation across a broad and often adventurous repertoire and won a strong following among audiences throughout the UK and abroad, touring in Ireland, Italy, Spain, Finland and Mexico. For several years Endymion was in residence at Blackheath Concert Halls in South London, and has been called one of the few chamber groups as much at home with Mozart as with Birtwistle. Endymion has made a speciality of 20th century music theatre and small-scale opera, including collaborations with the Royal Opera House’s Garden Venture, Women’s Playhouse Trust and Opera Factory, with which it undertook an extensive European tour of Dido and Aeneas and Curlew River during 1995. Endymion has appeared at most of the major British festivals and performed three times at the Proms. Endymion’s commitment to new music is well established: it has given over 150 world premieres. In 2008 it gave the very first public performance in the new Kings Place concert hall, beginning with a world premiere by Simon Holt. Endymion returned to Kings Place in June 2009 for its Sound Census festival, featuring 13 concerts in 4 days, 27 world premieres, education workshops and the recording of a commemorative double CD for NMC. Recent appearances on the South Bank and at the Cheltenham and Spitalfields Festivals have included works by Kurtag and Bainbridge, a new work by Michael Zev Gordon, an Elisabeth Lutyens portrait concert and premières of works by Raymond Yiu, Simon Wills and Brian Elias. A retrospective of Anthony Gilbert’s music featured a dozen specially composed musical tributes by distinguished contemporaries, including Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies, Alexander Goehr, Colin Matthews and Anthony Payne. Endymion’s collaborations with the BBC Singers have included world premières of Giles Swayne’s Havoc (Proms, 1999) and Edward Cowie’s Gaia (2003), as well as the UK première of Birtwistle’s Ring Dance of the Nazarene at the 2004 Proms (“startling virtuosity from all concerned” – Daily Telegraph). A particularly successful (and much imitated) innovation is the wide-ranging series of Composer Choice concerts staged by Endymion on the South Bank, in which composers select and introduce work by themselves and others. Participants have included Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, Oliver Knussen, Gavin Bryars, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Judith Weir, John Woolrich and Michael Berkeley. Education occupies a central place in Endymion’s activities. In 2009, the ambitious Sound Census project worked with schools in Tower Hamlets, Camden and Westminster, from Primary School children to GCSE and A-level students. During 2003-04 it organised a one-day festival The Rising Generation, featuring music by thirty young composers, took part in a performance project featuring pupils from schools in South London and the Purcell School, and staged a series of ‘Playthrough’ workshops in conjunction with the SPNM. Endymion’s many recordings include works by Stravinsky, Britten and Magnus Lindberg and (with the Dutton label) York Bowen, Edmund Rubbra, Thomas Dunhill, Lennox Berkeley, Erno Dohnanyi and Zdenek Fibich.