Draft:Ensemble Bash

Founder members were Richard Benjafield, Chris Brannick, Stephen Hiscock and Andrew Martin.

In 2000 Richard Benjafield left the group, replaced by Joby Burgess, a former student of Benjafield's at Guildhall School of Music & Drama . In 2007 Genevieve Wilkins joined the group, following the departure of Andrew Martin. In 2017 both Burgess and Wilkins left to focus on individual pursuits. This resulted in Richard Benjafield re-joining the group. The new fourth member of the quartet was Catherine Ring, who had performed with Ensemble Bash several times since 2012. Catherine left the group in July 2024, at which point Ensemble Bash became a trio. In September 2024 the Ensemble Bash Apprentice Artist scheme was launched, in partnership with Guildhall School of Music & Drama. The first participants in the scheme were Will Miles and Engin Eskici.

The quartet first met in 1990, rehearsing in Chertsey, Surrey. Intervention from the neighbours one Sunday afternoon resulted in a hurriedly re-convened rehearsal in the back of Richard's van in the lay-by to the M25, London's orbital motorway. To keep the peace, the group made the Music Workshop in Tottenham, north London, their main rehearsal base for the next ten years.

The group had two early public appearances on TV, and a BBC programme filmed at Kew Bridge Steam Museum in the autumn of 1991, and in 1992 the pilot episode of Hangar 17, an ITV children's show. A successful audition for London's Park Lane Group concert series gave Ensemble Bash their London debut concert, at the Purcell Room, South Bank Centre, in January 1992.

Their debut concert, on Monday 6th January 1992, featured two new works, co-commissioned by the PLG and their flamboyant impresario John Woolf, Hook^[1] by Graham Fitkin, and Urban Blues by David Osbon. John Cage's Third Construction and an arrangement of Agbekor, Ghanaian war drumming from Benjafield's studies in Ghana, completed the critically-acclaimed debut concert.

Two more concerts followed, at Brighton Music Festival in May, and at London's ICA on 4th July, in the Platform 2 series curated by Joanna MacGregor

The group then recorded Hook for Decca (Argo) in July at CTS Studios in Wembley, released on CD later that year, entitled Hook-Mesh-Stub-Cud, also featuring the John Harle Band and the Delta Saxophone Quartet.

Over 1993 and 1994, Ensemble Bash began to tour the UK, including concerts at Brighton Music Festival, Joanna MacGregor's Platform One series at London's ICA, Gordonstoun School, Royal Northern College of Music, and music societies across the country. Educational works became a feature of concerts, especially at schools and festivals.

The album Slapstick, Whipcrack, Thundersheet was recorded in 1994, the group's debut album, on CD. Recorded in analogue 4-track at London's Depot Studios in King's Cross, it was engineered and produced by Geoff Hilton, who had first worked with the group when they were rehearsing for their early TV appearances. The tracks featured a nod to their early Ghanaian inspirations, the classics Second Construction by John Cage and Marimba Spiritual by Minoru Miki, a new work by Stephen McNeff, Flirt Your Tail and Spin!, and music from the group's growing concert repertoire. Much of the album was featured on their BT / NFMS tour in 1995.

The group's growing presence resulted in two major breakthroughs in 1995. They were approached by Martyn Harry to sign for Sony Classical, who were then signing many contemporary classical music acts following the commercial successes of Henryk Gorecki and John Taverner. Alongside, this Ensemble Bash undertook a 25-date tour of the UK for the National Federation of Music Societies.

Ensemble Bash were invited by Russell Jones of the National Federation of Music Societies (now Sound and Music) to tour the UK in their Making More of Music tour, sponsored by the telecommunications company British Telecom, in collaboration with their communications director Roger Broad. Their 25-date tour reached music societies and schools across the country, from Devon to Musselburgh, Belfast to Lowestoft. BT commissioned Stewart Copeland's The Gene Pool as part of a programme of concerts and educational workshops that both popularised percussion to audience of all ages, and took live music to many of the emerging BT's growth areas.The tour spanned September 1995 to January 1996, featuring music from Slapstick, Whipcrack, Thundersheet as well as Launch^[2]

The CD Launch was recorded in April 1995 at London's Air Studios, produced by Martin Harry. Recorded in 24-bit stereo, the album features eight tracks, five of which were commissioned for the album.

New commissions were:

Shaken not Stirred - Michael Daugherty (Park Lane Group and London Arts Board)

The Gene Pool - Stewart Copeland (British Telecom)

Shiftwork - Howard Skempton (London Arts Board)

Suite d'Lorenzo - Orphy Robinson (London Arts Board)

Shining Through - Nick Hayes (Rainbow over Bath Festival)

Dash Me Something, written by Richard Benjafield after his studies in Ghana in 1990, and Apple Blossom by Peter Garland, were re-recorded (in digital high-tech 24-bit sound) from the group's debut 1994 album, Slapstick, Whipcrack, Thundersheet. The closing track was the group's arrangement, made with the Ghanaian musician Paulinus Bozie, of the Senegalese drumming Kumpo.

The album was released in May 1996, worldwide, and earned the group considerable notice and critical attention.

For Ensemble Bash's CD Launch, recorded in 1995 at London's Air Studios, Stewart Copeland, drummer of rock band The Police and composer of many film scores, was commissioned to write a new work. This was The Gene Pool. The recording was released in 1996

Ensemble Bash subsequently performed the work with Stewart Copeland in Italy in 2004,^[3] in a quintet version arranged by Chris Brannick, featuring Copeland on drumset. A performance was featured on the album Orchestralli^[4]. Copeland composed another work for Ensemble Bash in 2002, Breather, for their 20th anniversary CD A Doll's House^[5] and tour.

During these years, the quartet toured extensively, building on the exposure gained from the 1995 BT/NFMS tour.

Significant performances during this period:

In 2002-2003 the group celebrated the 10th anniversary of its first concert, with a ten-date national tour entitled drumgods. Venues included Symphony Hall, Birmingham and London's Spitalfields Festival in June 2003

The collaboration with Stewart Copeland continued with four tours to Italy between 2002 and 2005, in the Orchestralli^[6] project. Artists appearing alongside Copeland and Ensemble Bash included Radiodervish, Joanna MacGregor, Oficina Zöe, Ensemble Notte della Taranta, midi saxophonist Amadeo Bianchi, Raiz, and Orchestra Ueca (United European Culture Association) directed by Robert Ziegler. The Orchestralli CD and DVD recordings were realised in

in 2004 the Light & Shade tour with Joanna MacGregor and Britten Sinfonia was accompanied by a CD Neural Circuits,^[7] which featured composer Nithin Sawhney, cellist Chistopher van Kampen, tabla player Aref Durvesh, and conductor Cameron Sinclair.

A major concert in 2005 at the Rhythm Sticks festival at London's South Bank Centre featured a collaboration with the legendary Brazilian Nana Vasconcelos, and also the violinist Madeleine Mitchell, in to folk song arrangements, Mopti Street from Mali, re-composed by Simon Limbrick, and Kotetchke from Turkey, arranged by Stuart Jones. The concert also marked the end of the group's long and happy partnership with the artist agency Hazard Chase.

Ensemble Bash returned to Australia for a concert on 21st October, at Melbourne International Arts Festival, in the On the Edge of Sunset : New Music from Around the World series. Their collaborative programme, which included ten students from Victorian College of the Arts Percussion Ensemble in the Senegalse drumming piece Kumpo, culminated in a performance of Stewart Copelands The Gene Pool, with percussionists Peter Neville and Eugene Ughetti of SPEAK percussion, and drummer/percussionist David Jones. Those players also premiered a new piece, Murmur Points, by Taran Carter.

Between 2005 and 2007, Fiddlesticks, an innovative creative collaboration with virtuoso violinist Madeleine Mitchell, resulted in several concerts, and a CD^[8] on Signum Records. The CD featured music by Lou Harrison - his Violin Concerto with Percussion Orchestra, and new works by Anne Dudley, Tarik O'Regan, Stuart Jones, Simon Limbrick. Roger Thomas wrote in BBC Music Magazine " ... it happily turns out to be my favourite contemporary music CD of 2007."

With the departures of Joby Burgess and Genevieve Wilkins in 2017, the group returned closer to its original formation when founder member Richard Benjafield returned to Ensemble Bash, joined by Catherine Ring. The first concert of the new line-up was at Cambridge Music Festival in November 2017. represented by the agency Bright Ivy until the Covid pandemic of 2020-2021, Ensemble Bash continues to be an ambassador for high quality percussion music, promoting contemporary music-making and education, in entertaining concert and workshop formats.