Gimell Records was set up in 1981 to make and sell recordings by The Tallis Scholars. Single-artist labels have become commonplace in recent years: Gimell was the first, predicting the trend by at least a decade. This gave Peter Phillips and Steve Smith a head-start both in the technique of recording a capella singing and in gaining irreplaceable experience with a single repertoire and one artist. This experience is unique and enduring, informing every one of the 50 discs and more which Gimell has produced.

To specialise in renaissance polyphony in a world which is supposed to be ever more superficial is not a challenge for amateurs. Gimell and the Tallis Scholars together have devoted their careers to bringing a highly characterised ensemble 'sound' to the public through the greatest unaccompanied choral music. This has only been possible as a result of constantly refining and perfecting the raw materials which make up that sound. The result, built up over many years, has been a world-wide market for both their recordings and their concerts, now acknowledged as one of the UK's most impressive exports in the arts. It is also acknowledged that the success of this partnership between Gimell and the Tallis Scholars has gradually changed what people think of as main-stream classical concert repertoire, world-wide.

Gimell has a number of other firsts to its name. In 1984 it placed the first commercial order for Compact Discs with a UK manufacturer; in 1987 it won the Gramophone Record of the Year Award - the first independent label to receive this prestigious award and still the only recording of Early Music to do this; and now, with this website, it is both the first label to offer downloads in up to 4 levels of audio quality and the first to sell 5.1 Surround Sound downloads in the FLAC format.

This website is further proof of Gimell's determination to be at the cutting-edge of useful technological improvements. Gimell believes that the ability to offer downloads with audio quality that is far higher than the restrictive technical specification of the MP3 format, combined with the recent introduction of audiophile-quality Network Music Players to reproduce these downloads through your Hi-fi system, will be seen in the future to be a significant development in the retailing of recordings of classical music.