Octandre Ensemble
The Octandre Ensemble is a flexible collective of London-based musicians co-founded by composer Christian Mason and conductor Jonathan Hargreaves. Taking its name from Varese's seminal work, the ensemble is dedicated to exploring the energy of sounds, and the webs of ideas that form around them. Their debut concert, “Music as Spheres”, took place on March 24th 2011 in the beautiful chapel of King's College London and featured Anthedonia, the first in a series of commissions by their composer-in-residence Sinan Savaskan.
With a growing reputation for their carefully conceived concerts and events, they were featured as ensemble in residence at the York Spring Festival of New Music in May 2012. More recently they presented “Other Voices” at Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kiev, Ukraine (October 2012), and “Medieval Modernist” which focussed on the work of their patron Sir Harrison Birtwistle (December 2012). In November 2012, supported by Diaphonique and the Holst Foundation, they hosted the first Anglo-French Composers Forum at LSO St Lukes, London, in association with LSO Soundhub. They are currently engaged in a workshop/performance project, working with student composers at the University of Kent.