The Illyria Consort is a project of Baroque violinist Bojan Čičić, formed to explore rare Baroque works from the Venetian Republic and the Habsburg Empire. The group's programs on tour are often drawn from rare works known only in manuscript, including works by neglected violinists of the Baroque era. The Illyria Consort was formed by violinist Čičić, with the intent of exploring rarely heard repertory of the 17th and 18th centuries, centered on Venice and the lands of the Habsburgs. The members are Čičić himself on violin, viola da gamba player Susanne Heinrich, theorbist David Miller, and harpsichordist Steven Devine; the group also sometimes travels with a presenter. "Illyria" was an old name for Čičić's native western Balkan region. Čičić quipped in an interview on the London Symphony Orchestra's website (May 25, 2021) that "the driving force was my attempt to be the patron saint of failed violinists," and indeed, several of the group's recordings have focused on Baroque-era violinists who were musically significant but who remained obscure for one reason or another. In 2014, the Illyria Consort presented the program Treasures of the Monastery at the Utrecht Early Music Festival, performing violin sonatas from manuscripts in the library of the Minorite monastery in Vienna. The following year, the Consort traveled to Ghent, Belgium, performing a program entitled Sounds of Imperial Vienna and also performing Vivaldi's L'estro armonico set of violin concertos at the Festival de Sablé. In 2017, the Consort released its debut album, Giovanni Stefano Carbonelli: Sonate da Camera Nos. 1-6. The album was released on the Delphian label, with which the group has remained mostly associated. The group has continued to tour extensively, appearing at the Korkyra Baroque Festival and the Antwerp Laus Polyphoniae Festival in a program of Baroque music from the Adriatic region and performing widely in the Netherlands and Belgium. The Illyria Consort released another album of Carbonelli sonatas on Delphian in 2019, along with an album of the London Concertos by the little-known composer Giovanni Giornovich, apparently of Croatian background. In 2021, the Illyria Consort managed to release three albums in spite of the coronavirus pandemic: the group backed countertenor Barnaby Smith on the album Handel, and it issued two albums of its own, Adriatic Voyage: Seventeenth-Century Music from Venice to Dalmatia, and Pyrotechnia: Fire + Fury from 18th-Century Italy. ~ James Manheim, Rovi