Ensemble Reza to perform for Chichester Music Society
Festival of Chichester regulars Ensemble Reza are determined that the show will go on in 2022.
After all the disappointments of the past couple of years, they are pulling out all the stops to develop new audiences in Crawley and also to consolidate their home audiences in Haywards
Heath.
They are also lining up a concert in Chichester for the Chichester Music Society, a ticketed evening event on February 9 at the Chapel of the Ascension, University of Chichester.
For Chichester, the performers will be Miriam Teppich and Andrew Thurgood (violins); Anna Cooper and Matthew Quenby (violas); and Sarah Carvalho Dubost and Pavlos Carvalho (cellos) with a programme to include: Schumann Concerto for cello and string quartet; Brahms Sextet No 2 in G; Clara Schumann (arr. Anna Cooper) Piano quintet Romanze No. 1 Op.21. Tickets from the Chichester Music Society.
The Crawley and Haywards Heath concerts, however, are lunchtime events and are free admission.
Hannah Carter, Ensemble Reza managing director, said: “We have decided to dive in and keep the shop open.
It’s business as usual. We held out at the beginning of January when we just didn’t know what was going on. I did cancel some work that we had in schools and that was sensible because it was literally the first few days back. We just postponed it until February.
“But we just really want to get going now. We ran a lunchtime concert in the second week of January and we had about 40 people there which was good. Before Covid we would have had double that number, but the people that did come were people that we had not seen for a couple of years and they were all saying that they had had enough and were just wanting to just come back to concerts again after all this time.”
The Haywards Heath lunchtime series is at the Methodist Church: “It’s really accessible to people coming by train or by bus and it’s a really nice venue. And then we are also doing every fourth Tuesday of the month in Crawley. At the moment our series in Crawley is a slightly nomadic series. We have had funding for the series from the Crawley Cultural Fund which is through the Sussex Community Foundation and what they wanted was that we should take the series around Crawley. That means that it’s harder to build an audience but it does also mean that we go out and find the people.
“We’re just taking small steps at the moment. We are building up. What is really important is just to carry on doing what we are doing. We really want to be delivering music into the local community. It is about well-being and it brings people together and it gives people a space in the day to be together. It also gives people an opportunity to learn.
“Our concerts are really accessible and I think that’s really important in trying to break down the barriers around classical music where people think that maybe it’s just not something for them. We had someone at the end of a concert that we did in Crawley who came up to us and said ‘This isn’t usually the kind of thing that I would go to but I’m really pleased that I did.’
“And that’s so important to be creating a new sound world for people. If that happens for someone who is 40, then how great it is if you can do it for someone who is seven or eight. The other thing about Reza is that it is also about encouraging people to try to learn instruments themselves and to realise that these instruments are accessible. It’s a chance for people to start their own musical journey.”
So despite all the difficulties the Reza team find themselves in a strong position: “I think we are a very resilient group and we have put that to the test.”