Florian Ensemble Projects
Explore these pages to find out about the many different projects we’ve run since 2013!
Creating Musical Stories
Building musical imagination with KS2 students
From 2018 we received grants from Arts Council England to run an innovative project in East Cornwall primary schools, helping pupils to develop their musical imagination through listening.
The amazing stories they came up with are all available here, alongside live recordings of the pieces we worked on with them. You’ll be amazed at how precisely their narratives map onto the music!
Chamber Music Courses
Inspiring, friendly and flexible weekends of string ensemble coaching
Our weekend courses for string players are generally held in Autumn and Spring. They include small group coaching, string orchestra, technique clinics, optional masterclasses and a performance by the Florians.
It’s aimed at string players of all abilities, and is a relaxed and encouraging setting in which to explore chamber music. We are especially happy to welcome you if you have had only limited experience of small group music-making. It’s often hard to find playing that’s in between your own lessons and a large orchestra: our courses are a friendly and supportive environment in which to delve into chamber music playing.
Or if you’re experienced in groups that’s great too - we hope you’ll go away inspired and enriched by the experience!
Discoveries
Exploring the Czech Quartet’s musicality
In 2022 we did a deep-dive into a very old way of making music together, which was captured on record over a century ago.
In just a few days of experimenting, we were able to completely re-wire our own sense of ‘proper’ ensemble interaction—and we wrote down what we discovered. This process was the culmination of an 8-year research project into the ideas associated with musical togetherness.
Click the link to read about the project and hear the recordings we made.
Florian: Up Close
Intense performances in relaxed settings
Florian: Up Close takes our performances out of the concert hall and brings them directly to you and your community.
First run in Autumn 2019 in London, this project grounds music-making in the relationships between local people. You can get involved both as a host and as a guest.
The Art of Fugue & the Science of Symmetry
A live show about J.S. Bach, nature, and patterns
In the final years of his life, the composer Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a complex, abstract, multi-movement piece called Die Kunst der Fuge—or “The Art of Fugue.”
Beginning with an innocuously simple four-bar theme, in each variation Bach weaves patterns of greater and greater sophistication.
In this live talk-performance, premiered at Brighton Science Festival in 2017, the Florian Ensemble explore the power of this notion of transformation, and show how it can be not just an analytical tool, but a creative one. They investigate how the idea of tonal music depends on a fundamental asymmetry, and reveal some of the ways in which Bach exploited these properties with unrivalled sophistication and emotional depth.
