Scottish Ensemble (SE) has announced its 2020 autumn/winter season, spanning October to December 2020. Characterised by collaboration and a focus on connection, this new season embraces digital formats and demonstrates the power of music to increase wellbeing.
Founded in 1969, SE has established a reputation as the UK’s leading string orchestra, and is today known for exploring the imaginative and innovative ways in which classical music can be presented and shared. Since the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, this innovation has enabled SE to embrace the digital sphere and present a programme of online collaborations and digitally immersive audience participation pieces.
Despite the challenges faced by all across the arts and culture sector, SE continue to create imaginative, meaningful ways to bring music to people who might not otherwise be able to experience it. This season sees SE turn the reliance on digital from a necessity into an opportunity, as its versatile musicians and team focus on finding a new filmic language for classical music on screen.
Alongside ground-breaking collaborations with young musicians, established classical music stars, scientific experts, charities and more, SE will also deliver an integrated programme of bespoke participatory events and workshops in partnership with schools and Maggie’s Centres, utilising online tools such as Zoom, that have become part of everyone’s day-to-day communication.
SE Artistic Director Jonathan Morton said: “In these strange and challenging times, we feel incredibly lucky to be in a position to continue doing what we do, albeit in a slightly different way. Like everyone, we’ve had to adapt to digital and online technologies to an unprecedented extent, but we have always been committed to finding new ways of sharing our music and passion with our audiences and we feel we’ve risen to this particular challenge.
This autumn/winter season is defined by a desire to bring people together, to celebrate our connection with each other, even when we cannot be together physically.
In the films we’re releasing in the coming months, we hope people can get to know our orchestra a little more. We’ll share insights into the creative process, and chats with our players backstage, but we’ll also be able to put our audiences right in amongst us on stage, where you can really feel every muscle, moment of eye contact and breath that make a performance come to life.
As we can’t be with people in the same room, we hope to create a different type of intense connection through a bold filmic style and that we will allow our audiences to delve into lots of new creative ideas with us, even if it is through the medium of a screen.”
Full details of the season can be found here
