Huelgas Ensemble

The Huelgas Ensemble is a Belgian early music group formed by the Flemish conductor Paul Van Nevel in 1971. The group's performance and extensive discography focuses on renaissance polyphony. The name of the ensemble refers to a manuscript of polyphonic music, the Codex Las Huelgas. Van Nevel is noted for his style of performing many pieces with the singers and himself in a large circle, rotating, both in live performances (such as at the Rheingau Musik Festival where the pews had to be unbolted from the floor of the Basilika of Schloss Johannisberg in 2005), and in recordings around the microphone hovering above the center. In 2009, after 8 years with Harmonia Mundi of Bernard Coutaz, the group returned to the Sony Classical Group which celebrated the occasion with the reissue of a 15CD reissue box.