In the driving seat

The 12 Ensemble performs at St George’s, Bristol, in 2018

EVAN DAWSON

‘Our first few concerts were kind of fun and we didn’t necessarily plan into the future too much,’ remembers Eloisa-Fleur Thom, co-artistic director and principal violin of Londo string chamber orchestra the 12 Ensemble. ‘But I think it was always a dream of ours to be able to develop a group where we have artistic control and are able to shape the way we present our idea of classical music to our audiences.’

Without the infrastructure of masterclasses, competitions and subsequent concert opportunities that can help sustain quartets and trios in the early stages of their careers, that development has meant nearly a decade of self-promoted concerts and recordings. As well as making guest appearances at festivals and in concert series, the 12 Ensemble has collaborated with a growing number of artists from different genres live and on disc (including the 2019 album Sound of Silence by classical guitarist Miloš Karadaglić and the recently released Carnage by Australian rock elders Nick Cave and Warren Ellis).

‘What’s really important to bear in mind when we talk about all the collaborations that we’ve done is that we’ve never set ourselves a goal of working with cross-genre artists,’ emphasises the group’s other artistic director, principal cello Max Ruisi. ‘We never ask, “What’s going to be particularly edgy?” We are always just looking to collaborate with artists who we think have something special about them – who are innovative and have their own voice.’

Ruisi stresses that the starting point was the players themselves: a collection of students around the end of their conservatoire studies. ‘We didn’t have a concept that we then had to find the right players to fit. It was more that we had these great players around us who shared the same ideals about what music should be.’

As is the case for so many musicians, playing chamber music was at the heart of it. ‘We found that we got the most joy and freedom from music when we were doing it collaboratively – at the start it was mostly classical chamber music, just enjoying playing with other musicians. We believed that we could apply all the values and the approach of making music in that way to a larger scale, without sacrificing any of the creative freedom that you maybe would if you joined a more traditional orchestral set-up. That was the main impetus for starting the way we did.’

The group settled on twelve as the smallest number of players possible for getting started on string orchestra repertoire without a conductor, but they have always been relaxed about adding or removing players if required. They also presented themselves in an age-appropriate style that was neither dressed down nor pedantically uniform. It was a look well suited, for instance, to their 2014 residency at the Forge in Camden, north London, a venue that hosted bands, jazz and roots music in its regular programming and had begun to establish itself as

 habitual spot for indie-minded classical musicians before it closed in 2017 after only eight years in operation.

The ensemble’s repertoire choices and combinations were adventurous from the start, including pieces they have gone on to record, such as John Woolrich’s Ulysses Awakes (1989) and Lutosławski’s Musique funèbre (1958). Both works feature on their 2018 debut album, Resurrection, alongside Bryce Dessner’s counterpart to the latter, Réponse Lutosławski (2014), and their first commission, Autumn Songs (2014) by Kate Whitley. They had given the UK premiere of the Dessner in 2017 at Kings Place, London, in a concert that formed part of the venue’s Cello Unwrapped festival – to which they had been invited to play with Leonard Elschenbroich. That same year they also performed at the Sound Unbound mini-festival at the Barbican, where they returned the following year to play three programmes (one of which featured Réponse Lutosławski) in the Max Richter and Yulia Mahr-curated Sounds and Visions weekend.

Having cemented a number of these works in their repertoire, they went on to make their BBC Proms debut in 2019, appearing on a mixed programme alongside vocal consort Tenebrae, sarod player Soumik Datta and others. Joining the much admired singer-songwriter Laura Marling, they returned – thanks to a hiatus in the UK’s pandemic lockdown – to the truncated version of the festival in 2020. They had just been able, prior to the industry shutdown, to give their second album a live launch earlier in the year: entitled Death and the Maiden, it features an arrangement of the eponymous Schubert quartet and a new work, Honey Siren (2019), a languid, almost hallucinatory piece commissioned from the British composer Oliver Leith.

Despite this acceleration of activity, the group has been run entirely by Thom and Ruisi. ‘Yes, we still do everything,’ says Ruisi. ‘It’s now getting to a bit of a tipping point where it’s time to change that, maybe. But it has been a very good model, in many ways.’ It helps, he says, that there has been a consistent core membership of the ensemble dating back to its inception. ‘Those relationships and friendships and that commitment to a style of playing have always been there.’ As a result, players are more able to have an input. ‘Max and I take the lead on a lot of things,’ says Thom, ‘but we are very open and like to chat to people about their ideas. In terms of repertoire, when we’re rehearsing you can tell which pieces we’re all really into. We immediately know when we’ve got a programme of music.’

‘WE FOUND THAT WE GOT THE MOST JOY AND FREEDOM FROM MUSIC WHEN WE WERE DOING IT COLLABORATIVELY’ 

This is further galvanised in the ensemble’s practice of using residencies to work on projects, such as their 2015–16 trips to the secluded Icelandic town of Seyðisfjörður as part of the Heima Art Residency or their 2017 Aldeburgh residency at Snape Maltings. There they collaborated with choreographer Alexander Whitley to produce a dance piece inspired by Ulysses Awakes, a work that was also filmed and shown as part of their 2018 Reborn tour programme, which culminated in the Schubert.

‘We did one residency where we got stuck into learning “Death and the Maiden” and took the whole ensemble for a week in the middle of the Cornish countryside,’ says Ruisi. ‘You cannot underestimate how formative these residencies have been for the group. They have built on everything that has already been there in terms of relationships and friendships. To wake up every morning, have breakfast together, start chatting about ideas we’ve got about this or that bit in the piece… none of the stresses of real life are there. You are just completely immersing yourself in work. That’s why we can go into so much detail, and rather than just rattle off pieces the way a certain conductor does them and just do them again, we spend hours and hours – sometimes too many hours – going into the absolute depths of these pieces.’

This way of working, he goes on, has also given them the freedom to adapt to different settings, helping the group in their work with artists from various musical backgrounds. ‘It’s interesting that whatever is good for classical soloists who are used to playing chamber music is also brilliant for them when working with more contemporary artists. It’s much more similar to the feel of a band than an orchestra. That’s what music should be about: people buzzing off each other and taking ideas and running with them. We really want to get across the fact that we are a group of twelve youngish musicians who are not just a band for hire with a load of people coming in every now and then. The soul and the core of the ensemble is in the personal connections that have been created over a long time. That’s why we started doing lots of work with pop musicians and for films: because people have noticed that working with us is very different from working with twelve strangers or twelve people who meet up every now and then for sessions.’

On stage with singer-songwriter Elena Tonra for live album collaboration Ex:Re at Kings Place, London, in 2019

MARIKA KOCHIASHVILI

One of these collaborations has come to fruition in the form of a co-released album, a live performance (recorded at Kings Place in November 2019) with singer-songwriter Elena Tonra of her original 2018 solo album Ex:Re, orchestrated by the French–British composer Josephine Stephenson – who also features as pianist. ‘We’ve been very careful to ensure that we are never just a backing band in the projects we’ve chosen,’ explains Ruisi. ‘We are keen not just to be playing some kind of drone strings added on to the back of a record. That album, Ex:Re, has been completely reorchestrated so that we become the band – there’s no guitars, drums or anything, it’s just her voice and us.’

‘NOT HAVING A CONDUCTOR TAKES AWAY A BARRIER THAT’S OFTEN THERE IN COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS WHEN THERE’S A LARGE STRING SECTION OR ORCHESTRA’ –

Thom adds: ‘We make sure that we dedicate as much rehearsal time to pop projects as we would to a more standard programme. We all felt like we knew the songs on Ex:Re inside out, and then we let Elena perform like a soloist and ebbed and flowed with her. It’s the same rewarding experience because you are making music in the moment; you don’t feel like you’re just repeating the job.’

She makes a similar point about working with Marling, whose introverted songs sounded all the more poignant at a bittersweet time for so many musicians. ‘She’s so highly skilled in her artistry. And not having a conductor takes away a barrier that’s often there in collaborative projects when there’s quite a large string section or orchestra. With a conductor in charge, you are just following them. With that taken away, you have this amazing direct connection with the performer. In a way, all the skills that we’ve honed through chamber music we’ve ended up being able to bring to a different genre of music.

I think that’s when we’ve found we’ve been able to create something special for our audiences because it’s spontaneous – following a singer like we would follow a violin soloist playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, or something that we know really well.’

In rehearsal with singer-songwriter Laura Marling at the Royal Albert Hall, London, for the 2020 BBC Proms

AMY HINDS

The members of the 12 Ensemble: ‘trusting their instincts about working in multiple genres’

MATTIAS BJÖRKLUND

The group are increasingly adapting their approach to the concert format, too, Thom says, something that other classical performers are also advocating. ‘The thing we’ve become much more confident in doing, within our programmes, is making them slightly shorter than the standard classical concert, and maybe not having an interval. We’re making it more of a journey from beginning to end with a variety of music – like an album.’ Recent examples of this are their two live-streamed concerts from Wigmore Hall, London, part of a programme of relays put on by the venue over lockdown periods. ‘You want to go through a landscape on a journey. We’ve found that’s a better experience for us as performers and a better experience for the audience.’

Ruisi admits that in their early stages they felt somewhat obliged to play to expectations. ‘We were focused on being taken seriously, and that informed our repertoire choices. There would often be a concert that was ninety per cent core rep and really serious rep like the Lutosławski. We thought we needed to do that so that people wouldn’t think, “These young guys play lots of crossover music.” It was very easy back then to be brushed aside as something kind of lightweight. I think that’s been the most interesting part of our development: we quickly started to realise that we shouldn’t be trying to fit ourselves into this quite outdated and restrictive model, as that model is kind of dying anyway because of the issues that exist around the classical music world at the moment. And so we quickly started to develop the confidence to trust our instincts around working in multiple genres and different musical spheres.’

As Thom says, this pays dividends for individual players, too. ‘To be a musician today you have to be so adaptable to situations. It’s all music, really – you are just being open to using your skills in a way that is not the most traditional, classical-conservatoire approach. I think now, at least with younger generations, this mindset that you pick a career – as a soloist, a chamber musician or an orchestral player – can be blurred. That’s actually what makes you a better musician in the end, because you have all these qualities.’

‘WE QUICKLY STARTED TO REALISE THAT WE SHOULDN’T BE TRYING TO FIT OURSELVES INTO THIS QUITE OUTDATED AND RESTRICTIVE MODEL’

This month, with the UK again attempting to escape lockdown, the ensemble appears in another live-streamed concert at the Barbican in London. They will partner the Shostakovich Chamber Symphony with pieces by two of the UK’s most prominent genre-blurring composer-musicians, both of whom will join them on stage as performers: Water (2014) features Jonny Greenwood playing the tanpura, and Moon (2013) has Anna Meredith on live electronics. There will be live visuals, too, from Meredith’s artist sister Eleanor, making it a multidisciplinary collaboration.

‘I think the point you made earlier about us not being a string quartet and having the route of competitions to launch us is true,’ reflects Ruisi. ‘But that has been a blessing as well. It has forced us to find something that audiences will like, to do something different to get noticed, and to believe in what we do. I’m in a quartet too. We see people winning competitions, but there’s only so long you can live off being a prizewinner. It’s all well and good to have these accolades behind your name, but what’s really important is whether people pay money to go and watch you. Are you going to move people? Are you going to put bums on seats and further your art in the industry? Having to go it alone, so to speak, has forced us always to think hard about what we are doing. Why are we doing it? Is this bringing joy? Is this really being creative?’