The leading contemporary music and music-theatre ensemble in the North of England, Psappha was formed in 1991 by its Artistic Director, Tim Williams, and has built up a repertoire of over 100 works and a reputation for outstanding technical and interpretational ability.

Psappha has promoted an annual series of concerts in its home city of Manchester since 1991, and in Liverpool since 1998. The ensemble has also been invited to perform at many leading UK music festivals, notably Cheltenham, Huddersfield, Bath, Buxton, Oxford, St. Magnus Festival, Orkney, the ISCM World Music Days in Manchester and the Henze Festival at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank. Psappha also gave the first ever public performance at Stormont Castle in Belfast.

In June 2000 Psappha, in collaboration with Muziektheater Transparant, gave the highly acclaimed première of a new music-theatre work Mr. Emmet Takes a Walk specially written by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies with direction and libretto by David Pountney. Following a tour of Scotland, Psappha gave a performance at The Lowry in Salford which won the Manchester Evening News Theatre Award for Opera against very strong competition from Opera North's Genoveva and the RNCM's The Magic Flute, who were the other finalists chosen from all the operas performed in the Greater Manchester area throughout the year 2000.

Psappha is becoming as sought after abroad as in the UK, and in Autumn 2000 the group undertook highly successful tours of Australia, America and France. As artists in residence at the Barossa Festival in Australia they provided a varied programme of concert work and music-theatre, including staged performances of Maxwell Davies' Miss Donithorne's Maggot with Jane Manning and Eight Songs for a Mad King with Kelvin Thomas. A national tour of Australia is being planned for the 2002/3 season. The American tour in November featured Caltabiano's Marrying the Hangman in New York, San Francisco and Sacramento, and Psappha gave the French première of Mr Emmet Takes a Walk in Paris in October. Further performances of Mr Emmet will take place in 2001 in Paris in January, Belgium in March and Holland in April.

To date Psappha has released three CDs, with a fourth currently in production featuring works by Anthony Powers, to be released in Spring 2001. Psappha is regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and the ensemble consistently receives glowing reviews for its recordings and concerts.