The Bossard Quartet Blog

Elvetham Hotel

thebossardquartet — Sun, 06 May 2012 17:47:24 +0000

We enjoyed a double whammy of a quartet weekend this weekend, with a wedding to play at on both Saturday and Sunday.

First up was the wedding of Amanda and her hubby at The Elvetham Hotel, a very grand affair near Hook, in Hampshire. It’s a humungous place, with its own church on site too. We were booked to play during the drinks reception so we set up in the bar ready for when the ceremony finished. We played from 2-4pm and entertained with a range of repertoire.

Here’s us taking a breather below while the guests all ventured out into the chilly air of outside for the photos. They all scarpered back inside pretty sharpish, where we were ready and waiting to greet them with a rendition of Mr Brightside!

Playing Nirvana on Thorney Island

thebossardquartet — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:42:10 +0000

We spent our Friday night playing some of our favourite repertoire for the Officers and their Guests at Thorney Island. We were booked to play during drinks and dinner for a small group of around 30, and we were delighted to see that they had taken us up on their idea of TBQ Jukebox. Sometimes, we are a little unsure of how modern our repertoire can be at a formal mess dinner, so it was great to get guidance from the guests themselves as to what repertoire they wanted to hear!

Straightaway the requests came in for Kings of Leon “Sex on Fire”, Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and AC/DC (which we didn’t get time to play this time, next time perhaps!). So, we knew we were in for a fun night, and we got the chance to play all of our rock favourites secure in the knowledge that these selections were not going down like a lead balloon!

We were very pleased to receive this testimonial on our guestbook today

Amy,
Thank you and the rest of TBQ for a wonderful evening of music. Everyone was very impressed with the repertoire and with the breaking of tradition to play more modern requests during dinner. We will book again for another Dinner Night in the Future.
Regards
Harry

Rivervale Barn

thebossardquartet — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:08:17 +0000

We love a good barn! There are some great barns that have been converted into stunning wedding venues, and Rivervale Barn is one that we have come to know and love this year. Rivervale Barn is a new barn opened for weddings in June 2009 after a labour of love renovation from the owner. A new barn might not float your boat at first if you are more into the idea of having an old barn with character. However, we were really impressed with the job they’ve done at Rivervale of creating a barn with a warm, inviting ambiance. The space is so well proportioned for a wedding (I guess, having been specifically designed for that purpose it makes sense!) with beautiful lighting.

We enjoyed the fact that they have a balcony in the ceremony room that we can play in – this keeps us out of the way of the guests but still visible – and our music floats off the balcony and down into the ceremony room.

We played at the wedding of Becky & Dan’s earlier this year, and Lindsay’s in August too. We can’t wait to go back there!

Q&A : AMY

thebossardquartet — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:44:47 +0000

How many years have you been playing your instrument?

Since I was 6 - so a few years now (but I obviously can’t be revealing exactly how many!). Started on a tiny violin, and didn’t pick up a bow for about a year – perhaps this is why I love playing pizzicato so much – we’ve got an entire piece that is played pizzicato (Plink Plank Plunk)

What is your favourite piece for your instrument?

I have always liked Saint Saens Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso in A minor for violin and piano since I was a teenager. Saying that though, I can’t play it as it is fiendishly difficult. I also still enjoy the Cezar Franck Violin Sonata, one I learnt when I was back at school. Czardas is also good (and did you know that one of the Lady Gaga pieces starts with the Czardas for added drama?)

What other instruments do you play?

I am lucky enough to have a digital piano (with volume control) at home for me to tinker with, and also a collection of acoustic guitars. Including an acoustic bass which is quite fun to play with. Living in a terraced house means all of our instruments need to be quite quiet! I also dabble in a bit of ukulele with friends from time to time. They know who they are!

What is your favourite wedding venue The Bossard Quartet have played at?

I really liked Avington Park when we played there a couple of years ago – a lovely conservatory for weddings. I also like the Royal Marines Museum in Portsmouth – because this is very close to my house!

Aside from music what are your other interests?

I play badminton each Tuesday reasonably competently , like running (a bit, although I am in denial – but we all ran the Great South Run last year, so we’re all keen runners!). I am interested in retail and technology marketing (love trying out new ways of promoting the quartet), I love cooking, especially curries, and eating them too. Also, going on holiday is a big part of my life. When is the next one?!

If you could choose one piece from The Bossard Quartet’s repertoire that is your favourite, what would it be?

That’s tricky – it is often whatever is newest as I look forward to playing it again. I do like Anna’s arrangement of ELO’s Mr Blue Sky – one of my favourite songs and all four of us get a fun bit to play.

If you could choose one piece from The Bossard Quartet’s repertoire that you wish we played more, what would it be?

Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit – but it’s not always appropriate to play at weddings, I guess.. although saying that, it has proven quite popular as a request via TBQ Jukebox

See Sophie’s Q&A here

It’s a New Place, but quite old really!

thebossardquartet — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:35:23 +0000

We were so pleased to see a new Guestbook entry from Alexandra and Ryan, who booked us to play at their wedding at New Place last Thursday. Thanks guys, and best wishes for a happy married life together!

New Place, Hampshire - nice and local to us, and a beautiful venue

The Bossard Quartet played at our wedding ceremony and drinks reception, and were amazing. All our guests were really impressed and we loved their selection of pop music rather than the traditional classical music.It was beautiful to walk down the aisle to live music, it was such a memorable moment of the day.

Thank you for adding a really special touch to our big day – my only fault is for not booking you for longer!

Alexandra and Ryan

Photos – please send us them!

thebossardquartet — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 07:45:20 +0000

We’ve got some lovely photos of us in action on our website. That’s mostly because the weddings we often play have top class photographers there snapping away. It’s so lovely when couples take the time to send us over some photos that include us in them, or tag us in them on facebook

Private Wedding Party with a Commission your own Flyover

thebossardquartet — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 08:18:13 +0000

f you are lucky enough to live in a fantastic home with a large garden and views over Chichester Harbour, then you’d be silly not to make use of this location to host your very own wedding reception! Well that’s exactly what one couple did. After a church ceremony, all the guests enjoyed drinks in the back garden of the bride’s house. It was just about sunny enough for people to mill about outside without needing to take shelter in the enormous marquee that had been put up for the wedding breakfast later.

We were happily playing away in the garden, when to our surprise we found that guests had been distracted by something which was somewhat louder than the noise we were making. A flypast of 2 old airplanes! We assumed this was something that had been arranged by the bride and groom, and not just a random airshow. Either way, it was a fantastic display and really lent something special to the day. Everyone was buzzing after that!

Wedding at The Tythe Barn near Petersfield

thebossardquartet — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 15:55:37 +0000

We enjoyed playing today at the Cockerill Wedding at the Tythe Barn near Petersfield. It’s such a lovely venue (as we’ve blogged about before!).

Today we played during the ceremony itself (the bride entered to Pachelbel’s Canon, the couple signed their deeds to the tunes of Elton John’s Your Song and Elbow’s One Day Like This, and walked out the The Verve’s Lucky Man, which had been specially arranged by Anna).

: The View From the First Violin’s Seat

After the ceremony, we moved up to the balcony and entertained while the couple and their guests enjoyed some drinks. It wasn’t quite the summery weather we experienced last week, with a few more clouds in the sky today, but still a dry day for everyone!

: We enjoyed our view from ‘The Gods’ aka the balcony at the Tythe Barn

You’ve got mail – our leaflets are here!

thebossardquartet — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 09:15:44 +0000

In preparation for the wedding fair we recently played at, we got some fliers printed. A massive 80 of them! Now what shall we do with them?

Selling our wares!

Our debut of “TBQ Jukebox” – a novel approach to repertoire selection

thebossardquartet — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:51:49 +0000

We were delighted to be asked to play at a 40th birthday party recently. In fact, it was a joint birthday party for father and son who were both reaching ‘significant’ milestones. A great day for the Taggert family!

So, a real family affair and we set up to play at the Southern Yacht Club in Hamble. A lovely venue right on the sea (obviously) surrounded by boats and yachts. We were quite surprised to see there were well over 100 guests at this joint birthday party (so many friends!) so we resolved between us to try and play as loudly as possible.

This was the first booking we have done where we have offered the TBQ Jukebox service. This is where guests see a list of our repertoire, and complete our ‘Request Slips’ and pass them to us. These had been printed out and one given to each guest as part of the table layout for dinner.

We were excited to see what guests were requesting and waited in anticipation of our first request slips. None were forthcoming, and despite the fact that we could see people looking in curiosity at our request slips, none were delivered to us. So we self-selected a few tunes to get them started.

Still, no requests from anyone, and by this point we were a little perplexed. Were these guests particularly shy?

5 minutes later, a waiter from the yacht club came over and said ‘I’ve collected a bunch of request slips, should I give them to you?’ We said ‘YES!!!’ and he brought them over. There were well in excess of 70 different requests that guests had completed. Lesson to us, make it clear on the request sheet that in order for their request to be fulfilled, they should bring the request slip over to us and leave it on the floor near one of chairs (if we are playing)!

So we enjoyed reading the requests from the guests and we set about working our way through them. Unfortunately we didn’t get to play all 70 (that really would have taken several hours) so we hope nobody was disappointed.