Entries by Matthew Knight

Nelson residency Day 4 (by Simon Cox)

On our final day in Nelson we were up bright and early for another rehearsal, this time for our upcoming recording of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. It says a lot about how busy Septura’s members are in their orchestral ‘day jobs’ that the only time we could get everyone together to do this was on the other […]

Nelson Residency Day 3 (by Matt Gee)

The morning after our New Zealand debut was gloriously sunny – any fuzzyness from a rather short night’s sleep quickly cleared; Pete was even heard whistling in the shower such was his happy outlook. Group warm-ups kicked the day off at 8am – Matt and Dan gave away their playing secrets, and reduced everyone to […]

Nelson residency Day 2 (by Huw Morgan)

After the festivities of the previous evening, the second day of our residency began with Matt Gee bravely volunteering to lead the 8am group warm-up class. Rather unsurprisingly for such an early morning session, the attendance of Septura’s other members – which had been enthusiastically mooted some twelve hours earlier – failed to materialise, as […]

Nelson residency Day 1 (by Alan Thomas)

Today our long awaited residency in Nelson begins. Over the next four days  we’ll give a performance of our Pilfered Piano programme, coach various young chamber groups, conduct a concert of Gabrieli in the Cathedral and combine together with the students in the final concert in a big Strauss finale. After doing our individual daily […]

NZ Day 1 (by Matt Knight)

We celebrated Easter Sunday with the first rehearsal of our New Zealand tour, at the Centre of Musical Arts in Nelson. To be honest it was a bit of relief to feel slightly human again, and for our lips to have returned to a more normally responsive state. Brass instruments are fairly unique in that […]

6th disc reviews

The 6th volume in our Naxos series is a homecoming: music by English composers of the 20th century. This is what the press have had to say about it: Cox and Knight display exquisite sensitivity to the originals; they ought to make a pretty penny moonlighting as professional arrangers and film score orchestrators. How these […]

Una navidad española (by Matthew Gee)

The story begins at London Heathrow’s Terminal 3, with a typical touring check-in of 6:20am. Given previous touring mishaps, the simple fact that we still had flights booked made it one of our more successful starts to a tour. Not really knowing how cold Spain would be in December, most people came wrapped up for […]

Keswick Music Society (by Dan West)

An early Sunday call at a particularly rainy London Euston station sees Septura assemble to perform for the first time since our Kleptomania spree of concerts concluded in July. It feels like it’s been a particularly long break for us, considering how 2018 has been Septura’s busiest to date, performing dozens of dramatically different programmes around […]

“Ensemble playing of the highest quality” – Bachtrack

Our 2017-18 season came to an end with the final performance of our Kleptomania series at St John’s Smith Square, London. It’s been a fantastic season for Septura, full of firsts – our first US and Germany tours, first visits to lots of fantastic UK venues and festivals, and of course, our first concert series, performed […]

Altmark Festival, Germany (by Sasha Koushk-Jalali)

The Altmark Festival was Septura’s first German destination of 2018, and we met early on Saturday morning to polish up our Borrowed Baroque programme. We have performed this a number of times in the UK recently, and merely had to bring James Fountain up to speed on our newest piece, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite. After working our way […]