Pavlos Carvalho, Artistic Director
It is every musician’s dream to play the music you love, for the people you love in the places you love. Not just to play in the big city and concert halls, though this is always a thrill, but there comes a point where you want to be closer to home, playing in churches, other quirky venues, bringing music to those who cannot afford time or expense to go to the city.
To be able to rehearse without looking at the clock, have your family nearby and have a drink and a bit of food while you play and spend time with close friends. To know that a rehearsal is more of a discussion between trusted friends rather than something formal and then bring this spirit of relaxed openness and fun onto the concert platform. People for whom you are happy to be flexible and adaptable in your own ideas, without feeling you are compromising your own principles because there is such a trust and respect for the musicians and friends you are working with. Musicians with whom you know in those moments of doubt and shakiness, which happens to all of us, will carry you through it whether on stage or your personal life, as you would them when the time comes, in the same way that our role as musicians is to bring our audience through difficult times. This is Reza.
For the seven years, we have been together, whether we are musicians, manager, admin staff, trustees, we are firstly friends. Whatever role we play within the Reza family, one could not exist without the other and we all share a common goal to bring music to as many parts of the community as we can.
We take great care to present programmes that both carry on traditions of the great classical masterpieces, as well as music of different styles, new arrangements and compositions, finding unorthodox and fresh ways of creating a performance.
The programmes and projects are created in a way that will appeal and relate to as wide and diverse a public as possible but never selling something as a quick easy fix. We make a point of sometimes presenting challenging programmes that we are passionate about.
Whether for a formal concert, a workshop, a special needs residence, a school or a hospital, music has no borders and from Bach, Beethoven to Ella Fitzgerald, or the Beatles, if it feels right and we believe in it then we hope this joy will be reflected in the way we play and we will give our audience the same most fulfilling, fun and memorable experience that we have in anything we do together.
Welcome to Ensemble Reza.