I’m excited to share a new project that has been in the works for almost a year—meet Ensemble Échappée!

Ensemble Échappée will explore the (many) layers of music-making that exist beyond written notation. In many ways, the ensemble picks up where Birdfoot Festival left off—finding the meeting points between historical insight and present-day expression, asking big questions, and inviting listeners to participate in an ongoing dialogue between music, musicians, and the ideas that animate each project.

Échappée’s first project, Sweet Dissonance, which had its first performance in January, zooms into dissonance in music by Mozart, Webern and Kreisler. The project asks whether opening our ears to the stretch and release of dissonance in music can change the way we understand friction in everyday human interaction.

In October 2025 Échappée will be Ensemble in Residence (with mentoring by John Eliot Gardiner) at the inaugural Constellation Symposium: Music and the Land.

I look forward to sharing more soon.

Great photos and write up in the NY Times about the SWR EnsembleExperimental concert at Time Spans Festival.

Photo by George Etheredge

Following last year’s Schubert Octet tour, I was delighted to return to Australia for another chamber music tour with the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra. This year’s tour of Beethoven’s Septet and Louise Farrenc’s delightful Nonet began in Sydney at the stunning new Neilson Recital hall on the Sydney waterfront and ended in Melbourne. Read more about the program here. It was a true privilege to play the Septet and discover Louise Farrenc’s nonet—premiered in Paris in 1850 by none other than a young Joseph Joachim!—with this dream-team of colleagues: Georgia Browne (Flute), Tatjana Zimre (Oboe), Nicole van Bruggen (Clarinet), Anneke Scott (Horn), Lisa Goldberg (Bassoon), Stephen King (Viola), Daniel Yeadon (Cello), and Rob Nairn (Double Bass).

“…A performance of abundant energy and great refinement…There was such a unanimity in their phrasing and a common intent providing ensemble playing of the highest order…The massive violin parts were played with life and verve by Jenna Sherry who also showed many whimsical moments in interpreting the music. The cadenzas in each work were played with shape and direction bringing out the phrasing to perfection.”

—June 12, 2023 classikON, Peter Hagen

Photo by Robert Catto

Birdfoot Festival 2023 was the festival’s most adventurous season: At the heart of the festival was a listening pilgrimage that asked how we can understand our entwined relationship with the natural world through our ears. Winding through the entire 2023 festival, the listening pilgrimage unfolded as a series of outdoor pop-up concerts that reached beyond the concert hall to celebrate the simple beauty and the mythic dimensions of nature, bear witness to environmental degradation, and meditate on our place in the world.

Here’s a Birdfoot 2023 video snapshot that captures some of the highlights.

Photo by rhrphoto.com

As a radio-lover myself, it was a fun challenge to translate Birdfoot Backstage—Birdfoot’s signature musical deep-dive which usually takes place as a live event, into radio.

This episode explores the connections between music, silence, and ecology and the inner-workings of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony — a preview of the 2023 Birdfoot Festival. Huge thanks to everyone at WWNO New Orleans for their enthusiasm and the funding to do this, and pianist & radio-maker Guy Livingston for working with me to realize the concept.

Photo by rhrphoto.com

It was a joy to join the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra as guest leader for their Sounds of Vienna tour. Over eight concerts, we toured a program of Schubert’s epic Octet and Eybler’s lesser-known String Quintet in D major to Noosa, Brisbane, Orange, UKARIA cultural center, Newcastle, Woodend, and Sydney. And what a pleasure to share the stage with Nicole van Bruggen (Clarinet), Niels Coppalle (Bassoon), Anneke Scott (Horn), Peter Clark (Violin), Simon Oswell (Viola), Daniel Yeadon (Cello), and Rob Nairn (Double Bass).

“Using instruments from the period, they adopted…a spirit of indulgent freedom and whimsical enjoyment. This came alive most freshly in the finale, a concertante movement for the first violin, to which Jenna Sherry brought spirited brilliance and virtuosity.”

— June 16, 2022 Sydney Morning Herald (Peter McCallum)

“During the Menuetto, Jenna Sherry was almost tapping her feet as her fingers danced on the violin. The final movement, with its feelings of impending storm, ended in joyful triumph.”

— June 19 2022, classikON Heidi Hereth

Photo by Wallis Media

The 2021 Birdfoot Festival celebrated the festival’s 10th anniversary with a series of online musical explorations in the format of the festival’s Backstage event. It was a joy and inspiration to put together each event with these inspiring colleagues. The recordings of these events can be watched at the links below.

RHYTHM: DVOŘÁK & PRICE— Backstage with the Jasper String Quartet

TEXTURE: KATHERINE BALCH—Backstage with the Argus Quartet

VOICES: HAYDN & MOZAR—Backstage with Jenna Sherry, Mayumi Sargent, Elizabeth Smalt, & Lucile Perrin

TIME: LILI BOULANGER—Backstage with the Linos Piano Trio

GRATITUDE: BEETHOVEN—Backstage with the Borromeo String Quartet

MEMORY: BRAHMS—Backstage with Jenna Sherry, Shuann Chai, & Teunis van der Zwart

It has been truly delightful and moving to hear from friends and colleagues who took the time to listen to the Brahms & Dohnányi disc. The recording has been heard on Bartók Radio, WFMT Chicago (New Releases with Lisa Flynn), and you can hear me talk about the recording (and other things) on WWNO New Orleans’s Inside the Arts with Diane Mack. We are also grateful to the writers and reviewers who listened & engaged with the recording—and for their thoughts and words! Here are a few:

International Piano magazine Jan/Feb 2021 (Ateş Orga):

“Dániel Lőwenberg is a pianist whose warmth and depth of tone is ideally suited to Brahms and the emotional nuances of fin de siècle Austro-Hungarian music. In the New Orleans violinist Jenna Sherry, now based in London, he has a sensitive partner to share the journey. She advocates the music commandingly, its rise and fall blooming naturally, her vibrato expressively tasteful and restrained. Production values favour intimacy, opaqueness and muted russet shades. Dohnányi’s Sonata (1911) — a quicksilver Brahmsian homage that doesn’t end quite as one might imagine — is persuasively, sensually championed. Gorgeous.”

BBC Music (Jan Smaczny):

“Dániel Löwenberg’s decision to play an 1898 Steinway certainly adds an interesting sonic dimension, matching Jenna Sherry’s clear violin tone in well recorded performances that are technically irreproachable.”

Violin Channel

Violinist.com

Strad Blog post