The Endymion Ensemble

“The brilliant Endymion” (Sunday Times) exists to deliver world-class performances of chamber music throughout London, the UK and abroad.  It nurtures the UK’s most dynamic and original composers, inspire younger and new audiences and champion mixed chamber music of all genres, through performance, commissioning, recording and promotion.

Since Endymion was formed in 1979 from a group of outstanding National Youth Orchestra students, it has built a secure reputation across a broad and often adventurous repertoire and won a strong following among audiences throughout the UK and abroad, touring in Ireland, Italy, Spain, Finland and Mexico.  For several years Endymion was in residence at Blackheath Concert Halls, and has been called one of the few chamber groups as much at home with Mozart as with Birtwistle.

Unusually for chamber groups so well established, Endymion retains most of its original players.  These performers now number among the best soloists and chamber musicians in Europe, including Mark van de Wiel, Stephen Stirling, Melinda Maxwell, Michael Dussek and Chi-chi Nwanoku MBE.  Its 2009 30^th birthday festival was not only a reason to promote the ensemble, but a genuine opportunity for Endymion’s wonderful musicians to celebrate 30 years of performing together.

Endymion has made a speciality of 20^th century music theatre and chamber opera, including collaborations with the Royal Opera House’s Garden Venture, Women’s Playhouse Trust and Opera Factory, with which it undertook a European tour of Dido and Aeneas and Curlew River in 1995.

Endymion has appeared at most of the major British festivals and performed nine times at the Proms.  Recent appearances at the Southbank Centre, Kings Place and at the Cheltenham and Spitalfields Festivals have included works by Kurtag, Simon Holt and Simon Bainbridge, a new work by Michael Zev Gordon, an Elisabeth Lutyens portrait concert and premières of works by Vic Hoyland, Philip Cashian and Brian Elias.  A retrospective of Anthony Gilbert’s music featured a dozen specially composed musical tributes by distinguished contemporaries, including Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies, Alexander Goehr, Colin Matthews and Anthony Payne.  Endymion’s collaborations with the BBC Singers have included world premières of Giles Swayne’s Havoc (Proms, 1999) and Edward Cowie’s Gaia (2003), as well as the UK première of Birtwistle’s Ring Dance of the Nazarene at the 2004 Proms (“startling virtuosity from all concerned” – Daily Telegraph).

A particularly successful (and much imitated) innovation is the wide-ranging series of Composer Choice concerts staged by Endymion at the Southbank, which have included Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, Oliver Knussen, Gavin Bryars, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Judith Weir, John Woolrich and Michael Berkeley.

In June 2009 Endymion celebrated its 30^th Birthday at Kings Place with the Sound Census festival.  Alongside a celebration of classical chamber music repertoire, 20 British composers were commissioned to write new works for Endymion.  These were recorded for release by NMC Recordings.  This disc will join a host of other recordings by Endymion including works by Lutyens, Stravinsky, Britten and Magnus Lindberg and (with the Dutton label) York Bowen, Edmund Rubbra, Thomas Dunhill, Lennox Berkeley, Erno Dohnanyi and Zdenek Fibich.

Endymion is committed to outreach projects with all sectors of society, through work with young children (RPS Award-nominated Sound Census project in 2009), aspiring musicians and adults with mental health difficulties (featured in the BBC documentary “I love being mad”).  Music Teacher Magazine ran a profile of the Sound Census project, concluding it was “fearsome and spirit-raising in equal measure… proof of just what can be achieved at this level of music education”.