MAGNARD ENSEMBLE

Greetings from the Magnard Ensemble and the first of our e-newsletter! Momentum is certainly in our favour at the moment as we dance and prance towards the festive season. October saw the release of our DEBUT CD - 'Revolting Rhymes and Marvellous Music'. The disc contains the works that we toured the country with to celebrate Roald Dahl's centenary year, and charted at 29 in the Classical Artists Chart. We are absolutely thrilled with how well received the CD has been, and th

Three amazing pieces. On the brink of a national tour. In April 2016, Trinity United Reformed Church, Wimbledon is the venue. We have the exceptional producer Andrew Keener at the helm and Oscar Torres engineering. We’re about to make our debut CD, ‘Revolting Rhymes and Marvellous Music’! I was quite nervous about the whole process - I’d never been recorded in such an exposed ensemble, making something that felt so much like it belonged to us. It was amazing to be in the hand

Hi there!! It's now EXACTLY a week until the 29th September, 'Maggerz Day', when we release our Roald-Dahl themed debut disc 'Revolting Rhymes and Marvellous Music' on Orchid Classics!!!!! Everyone at Magnard Towers is SUPER excited and can't wait for you all to hear it. To countdown to the Big Day we thought it might be fun for every member of Team Pig to write a blog post discussing a different aspect of the project, from highlights of our ongoing tour to anecdotes and behi

Mana here! TWO big pieces of news this month. Number one, our fabulous flautist, Suzie got married! Congratulations Mr and Mrs Clements!! She was a beautiful bride and although I vowed not to cry, my tear duct had a different idea as soon as I saw Suzie at the bottom of the church aisle… News number two, OUR CD IS FINALLY READY. We can hardly believe it ourselves. It’s been such a long and windy road (with lots of learning curves) but thanks to everyone who supported us over

A big hello from Team Pig! We’re sorry for the radio silence recently: having enjoyed a summer off, we have hit the ground running in September. In the last two weeks we have visited five locations across the country, delivering ten concerts and three workshops. We began the month in my hometown of Laughton, near Lewes in Sussex. We delivered a quintet gala concert to a packed audience at the Roebuck Inn, performing everything from Danzi to Gershwin. A huge thank you to every

Brace yourselves, piglets. The Magnards are coming. Nothing can stop them. World Domination is at hand. ... Fresh from seeing the wonderful Theater Gnaffel and the Cambridge Philharmonic perform their interpretations of 'The Three Little Pigs and 'Little Red Riding Hood' with full orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, I spent my journey home thinking about what I should write for this week's blog, where we are as a group and what we have coming up on the horizon. On the face

Hello all! Another Sunday means another blog from the Maggerz team! People often ask us where we got our name, the 'Magnard Ensemble' from, so I thought the blog would be the perfect opportunity to enlighten you all! To do this we have to cast back to 2012 and to our student days at the Royal Academy of Music. Whilst there, we originally formed a piano quintet - piano plus flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon (can you believe we originally didn't have a Jon!) and really the only ma

Hello everyone! Another new blogger this week! I’m Cat, the bassoonist of Magnard Ensemble - new to blogging and also the newest member of Magnard. Just a very quick bit about me! I’ve been playing the bassoon ever since I perfectly matched it in height - please see the attached photo of a grinning loony, in a spectacular outfit pushing the boundaries of fashion… This photo may be a gratuitous public embarrassment of myself, but I think it also demonstrates how exciting music

As the members of the Magnard Ensemble recover from our respective Christmases, we are beginning to look forward to the year ahead and all the exciting projects we have on the horizon. First among them is our Roald Dahl Centenary Project, Revolting Rhymes and Marvellous Music. The promotional materials are being assembled, the engagement list is being drawn up and we have our recording planned for April. The press and PR campaign will be gathering steam from February, and we

Second week, second Sunday, second blog post, right on schedule. It really has been a busy, exciting, and wonderfully crazy week chez Magnard. Wednesday saw the second session of our four-week project with Wigmore Hall and Manorfield Primary School - more games, more fun, and of course more composition! The children of Year 5 are coming up with lots of brilliant musical ideas to portray the story of Roald Dahl's Goldilocks, with Jon, Cat and myself on hand to help them organi