Jordi Savall is to receive the fourth biennial York Early Music Festival Lifetime Achievement Award. The viol player will be presented with the award on July 8 when he brings his ensemble, Hespèrion XXI, to the festival to perform ‘The Route to the New World: From Spain to Mexico’.

‘After holding so many warm memories over the years, it is for me a great honour to receive this prestigious award from the York Early Music Festival, which I want to share with my musicians and with [former soprano and wife] Montserrat Figueras.’

Savall has been a high profile and celebrated figure of the early music world for nearly four decades. He is director of Hespèrion XXI (which he formed as Hespèrion XX with Figueras in 1974), Le Concert des Nations and La Capella Reial de Catalunya.