Ecce is a renegade new music and performance art ensemble. Each member has their own distinct talent and experience, but they all share a healthy disregard for customary boundaries in contemporary classical music. They harness this ethos to create opportunities for new and original interactions with music by performing in often unconventional environments. Since 2010, Ecce have brought exciting performance experiences of the world’s most contemporary, even anarchistic, classical music to life. They get excited about new music, hearing it, reading it, and performing it, and each year they share that enthusiasm by choosing a composer of particular interest to the group in an annual summer series called Etchings.
This year they’ll be performing the music of celebrated composer and educator Trevor Weston whose music reveals a refreshingly imaginative musical personality and has been performed by dozens of ensembles including Bang On A Can and Roomful of Teeth. Some of the themes of Weston's music are based on the notion that classical music is, by definition, performed by working people; musicians, and should likewise be enjoyed by people of all social strata, not contained in conservative spaces inaccessible to the masses. This idea and the performance of Trevor Weston’s music, questioning and breaking the rules, are well suited to Bombyx and the Florence Congregational Church with its abolitionist history and spirit.
Ecce will be joined by Trevor Weston himself for a full week in Northampton, rehearsing at 33 Hawley St. (aka the Northampton Center For The Arts) for a few days, presenting music and information in a teaching session at Click Workspace, and culminating in the performance at Bombyx on Saturday, August 20th. The performance will be recorded for release as an album at a future date.