“Ensemble Offspring never fails to deliver exciting programs and vibrant performances.”
Angus McPherson, Limelight
“I could continue listing milestones…but when it comes to championing new music, Ensemble Offspring walks the walk.”
Mark Bosch, CutCommon
HARK THE MACHINE
“4.5 stars. This was a cracking start to Ensemble Offspring’s 2018…”
The hypnotic work [Pentography] charted a course…tranquil warmth and dream-like passages… and finally a sense of stillness and calm…”
Angus McPherson, Limelight
“If you think new music is not for you, go see Ensemble Offspring, the musical alchemists who bring irresistible magic, joy and hair-raising virtuosity to the music of today.”
Sonya Lifschitz – audience member and acclaimed pianist
SIZZLE
“It’s fancy music in a regular venue. It’s bringing serious art to the serious community.” – audience member
BEGINNINGS TO NEW ENDS
“A heroic performance by Edwardes.”
“Ensemble Offspring never fails to deliver exciting programs and vibrant performances…Beginnings to New Ends was no exception.”
Angus McPherson, Limelight
GAME ON
“Live performance thrives on simple innovations like these. Live music isn’t just sound — it’s sight as well, and why not smell?”
“This is best approached as a sort of multisensory salon… Julian Day’s Game On created some highly entertaining situations for performer and audience alike.”
“…replete with ideas, feelings, and sensory experiences — and most importantly, it was fun.”
Mark Bosch, CutCommon
EXTENDED PLAY
“Sydney’s own Ensemble Offspring hit the auditorium for a hypnotic all-Reich set – Radio Rewrite and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Double Sextet bookended a glimmering solo performance by Claire Edwardes of Vermont Counterpoint on vibraphone and xylophone.”
Angus McPherson, Limelight
“Ensemble Offspring concluded with a taut, concentrated performance of Reich’s major work Double Sextet, with an arrangement by Claire Edwardes for xylophone and vibraphone (with pre-recorded tracks) of the same composer’s Vermont Counterpoint.”
Peter McCallum, Sydney Morning Herald
“Ensemble Offspring enthralled its audience.”
“The ensemble opened its program with the immediately deeply engaging electric bass- and piano-driven Radio Rewrite, with the other instruments soaring.”
“The ensemble’s performance of Reich’s Double Sextet granted us the luxury of two live sextets…here we witnessed the subtle interplay between the two groups with minimalist big band verve.”
“…all credit to Edwardes on vibes and Zubin Kanga and Sonya Lifschitz on pianos, and superb ensemble playing all round.”
Keith Gallasch, Real Time
“Earlier in the day Ensemble Offspring celebrated the music of Steve Reich. The players’ tight-knit performances of Radio Rewrite and Double Sextet captured their propulsive energy.”“Percussionist Claire Edwardes’s scintillating account of Vermont Counterpoint illuminated its contrapuntal intricacies”
“Exciting, invigorating and good fun, Extended Play was the best new classical music initiative Sydney has seen in years.”
Murray Black, The Australian
SPECTRAL TECH
“I could continue listing milestones…but when it comes to championing new music, Ensemble Offspring walks the walk.”
“In a music industry that can often feel impenetrable — most of all for marginalised voices — its mission is not just honourable, but essential. In other words, it is not just doing the right thing, it is doing what’s necessary for the survival of new music in Australia.”
“…there was more than an ounce of individual brilliance in there, too. All backed by a different, static light display, and impeccably presented by the ensemble, the compositional nuances in each work were really allowed to shine.”
“Pozniak’s En Masse was a taut, energising experience…The creation of work untranslatable into genre confines is essential to maintaining the spirit of innovation intrinsic to new music – the same spirit that Ensemble Offspring embraces and does so very much with.”
Mark Bosch, Cut Common
SPEL TURA TOUR
“In accordance with the increasing push for improved female representation in art-music, four female artists composed the five pieces featured in the program, while the ensemble itself consists of two women and two men, with Claire Edwardes the ensemble’s artistic director. This is proof (though none at all is needed) that there is enough repertoire by women for music programming to include many more works by them.”
“Andrea Keller’s Love in Solitude…forcefully and percussively, breaks up the sense of a scattered field of materials and offering a more urgent set of motivic forces.”
“Ensemble Offspring provided a delightful night of well executed works.”
Jonathan W Marshall, SeeSaw
“Led
by the all-amazing percussionist Claire Edwardes, the concert kept its audience
entertained from beginning to end”
“The sine tones ringing above the gentle piano had an outstanding effect, not
to mention that it was hard to take your eyes off the pianist, Zubin Kanga,
with his ability to capture you in his playing. Soft, yet intriguing.”
“Edwardes managed to keep the audience engaged with her awesome, flawless playing, something that is very hard for any performer to achieve.”
Germaine Ping, X-Press Mag
LONE HEMISPHERES
“a night of exciting music-making, with a beautiful sense of interweaving relationships linking the new works to the ‘classics’.”
Angus McPherson, Limelight