Ensemble Bash

What is Ensemble Bash?

Entertaining, informative and energetic, the legendary percussion quartet Ensemble Bash has been drawing contemporary and traditional music together in innovative style for over 30 years, creating unforgettable performances that have been enjoyed and acclaimed across the world.

 

“Classical music concerts dull? I heard a Senegalese dance and shared the life of a firefly. I whizzed through the Channel Tunnel. I went to a noisy dinner party and toured the constellation Cygnus. This could only have been a concert by Ensemble Bash who make playing percussion the coolest, noisiest and funniest occupation on earth.” (The Sunday Times)

We’ve appeared several times at the BBC Proms, released 9 albums, and appeared on BBC Radio and TV.

Composers love working with us. Ensemble Bash collaborates closely on each new piece – always with the aim of giving several performances. Artists with a long association with us feature some of the most exciting names in contemporary music, including Steve Reich, Orphy Robinson, Graham Fitkin, Sarah Angliss, Colin Riley, Joanna MacGregor, Django Bates, Peter McGarr, Madeleine Mitchell, and Howard Skempton.

The quartet has made a speciality of being portable and logistically easy to take on tour as required. We’ve fitted a complete concert’s worth of percussion into an 8-seater plane whilst touring the Channel Islands and also taken most of our instruments as hand luggage to Bavaria to play in a forest. Our workshops in percussion ensemble and West African drumming are famous for our ability to inspire, educate and excite, for seasoned amateur and student musicians, and percussion enthusiasts alike.

Ensemble Bash’s formation was inspired by Richard Benjafield’s study in Ghana of traditional Ewe and Ashanti drumming and Dagari gyil (xylophone) music. It’s no coincidence that this was in the very centre where Steve Reich famously studied before he wrote his seminal percussion work Drumming.

Ghanaian musical language and its performance aesthetic have always been guiding influences on Ensemble Bash’s charismatic and entertaining performance style and we’ve made several trips to Ghana to study traditional music. We have performed with our Ghanaian teachers and colleagues in Ghana and in the UK, in venues from Birmingham Symphony Hall to Torrington Arts Centre in Devon.

Other international gigs have taken us to Hong Kong (the 1997 handover ceremonies), Australia, and Italy in the Grammy-nominated Orchestralli, with Stewart Copeland, drummer for rock band The Police, and film composer.

With our vast experience in a wide variety of settings, Ensemble Bash can tailor programmes and workshops to any context and venue.