RPS Music Awards 2023
Rebecca Franks meets the founders of Manchester Collective, winners of the Ensemble Award, to learn their recipe for success
Ensemble Manchester Collective In the spring of 2016, in a Shoreditch restaurant, violinist Rakhi Singh and cellist Adam Szabo dreamt up Manchester Collective. ‘It was one of those astonishing right place, right time things,’ says Szabo, now the ensemble’s artistic director and chief executive. ‘We thought it might be fun to put on some chamber music – and, in the way you do when your life responsibilities are not that big, within 90 minutes we agreed we’d do a year of concerts.’
From the start, Manchester Collective had a distinctive ethos and style – surely no small part of why it has won this year’s Royal Philharmomic Society Ensemble Award. The programme for its debut concert was typically eclectic: Biber interwoven with Cage and juxtaposed with Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. The players spoke to the audience; the performance was in the round; there was stage-lighting (hastily bought from Ikea, reveals Szabo). The aim was to make the classical concert experience part of contemporary culture, rather than seem like a museum artefact.
‘If you want to stay true to your principles, they have to be simple, direct and clear,’ explains Singh, now the Collective’s music director (and lead violinist). ‘There were three things for us: to play what we want, in the way that we want. That includes everything from clothing to lighting to seating to speaking. To play to whoever we want. And to do it as well as we possibly can – to give it your all.’
It’s been a winning formula. As Richard Morrison wrote in The Times, Manchester Collective is a ‘free-wheeling ensemble that can go in a blink from the slow movement of a late Beethoven quartet to a selection of Scottish fiddle tunes – and play both as though steeped in the repertoire from birth’. The group’s reputation has soared as it has toured the country in venues ranging from gig spaces to traditional concert halls.
Like everyone else, Manchester Collective had to contend with the pandemic. During that tough period, the
group released its first EP and used the time to record and live-stream. When live music returned, the Collective was ready to make waves. ‘We’ve been going seven years now,’ says Szabo, ‘so it feels like this is the start of a second act. Or at least it’s not the beginning anymore.’
A bumper year was kickstarted by their BBC Proms debut in August 2021. ‘It was amazing,’ says Singh. ‘I wondered if our tiny ensemble would look like little ants in that colossal space, but it wasn’t as big as I’d remembered. We stand up to play anyway and our players gave it their all. With Adam there to compère, it really felt as if we had built up to the point where we could own the stage.’ With close miking and effective lighting, the small group made a big impact.
An artist residency at London’s Southbank Centre gave another highprofile platform. The Collective’s first season included the George Crumbinspired ‘Voice of the Whale’, and the ‘big percussion, live electronics and amplified strings’ of their ‘Heavy Metal’ programme. ‘They were buzzy, full shows,’ says Szabo.
‘It was really exciting.’ The year culminated in ‘The Oracle’ tour with the Manchesterbased cellist Abel Selaocoe, with whom the Collective had previously worked. ‘It was like all the bits of the company came together. The commissioning, the classical interpretations, bringing together music from different cultures, the production aspect, the chat, the lights,’ says Szabo.
Often ‘ensemble’ awards are about the players on the stage, but for Manchester Collective the word encompasses the whole team. Designers, producers and photographers, among others, are listed alongside the musicians on the website. ‘There are lots of extra-musical aspects to a live experience that can be terrifically exciting and engaging for an audience,’ says Szabo. ‘The way the work looks and feels is so important. We are a big collective.’
‘In the Albert Hall, we really had built up to the point where we could own the stage’