The High Clouds is a group of musical friends who like to play together. We perform music designed for a much broader, more inclusive audience than is normally the case. We play as amateurs nevertheless we perform to a high professional standard. 

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Check over any of the pages on this website and you will see that the High Clouds is a different kind of 'classical' band.

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Like clouds we can morph into different shapes to suit our music. We often appear as a violin quartet, sometimes as a string quartet. We might add a guitarist, a soprano, a pianist or a harpsichordist.  Our byline is "real and virtual' which means that we fully embrace present-day culture & its technology. We add video and even use digital instruments.

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Classical in style but with a modern mindset.

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Andrew Hodges, the guiding light behind "The High Clouds", has a creative philosophy based on the notion of 'Music For All'.  This means that we in "The High Clouds" have a diverse, non-elitist, inclusive approach to music-making.  This informs all our musical decisions including how we approach the performance of classical music.

 

We have provided ourselves with the freedom to rework and reconstruct classical favourites. Composers in the past might have written things differently had they known about 21st century technology. We do the reverse too and take modern pop, for example, and reimagine it as if it were created 250 years ago.

 

Andrew recomposes, rearranges and creates our music in a classical style in such a way as to appeal to the many different  types of people who are now becoming much more attracted to the classical 'style' of music.  This new audience likes classical but wants something which speaks more directly to them.

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So our concerts are different.

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We have created for Vivaldi, his own Baroque music video. 

 

We take 20th & 21st century pop music and send it back in time 250 years.

 

We even play a musical computer game live on stage!

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