Founded in 2014 by violinist Phillip Granell, Phaedra has evolved from its inception as a string quartet to a larger collective of like-minded performers, drawn from London’s diverse musical landscape. 

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2023 sees the culmination of their collaboration with the extraordinary vocalist/composer Meredith Monk, with the forthcoming release of their debut album featuring the first recording of her only string quartet Stringsongs plus two works for larger ensemble. The album will be released on ECM Records.

 

In 2022 they released their first series of Sonic portraits, three fragments, November on October House Records featuring collaborations with Mira Calix, Bishi Bhattacharya and Love Ssega.  2021 saw the release of their first EP O Superman featuring works by Laurie Anderson, Leo Chadburn, and Phaedra co-director Jamie Hamilton. 

 

Their latest release Taking a nap, I Pound the Rice is out now featuring ECM artist and pianist Fred Thomas.

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Previous UK performances include Kings Place, The Barbican, Kammer Klang @ Cafe Oto, Royal Festival Hall & Purcell Rooms, The Royal Opera House, and internationally at  NYU Arts Center (Abu Dhabi), and La Seine Musicale (Paris). They have been broadcast and performed live on BBC Radio 3 and Resonance.fm.

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Other collaborations include performances with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw, British singer Ghostpoet,  vibraphonist Masayoshi Fujita (Erased Tapes), and recording with Barak Schmool (F-IRE Collective).

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Their ongoing VOX project explores the radical use of the human voice in music and performance, leading to a dozen new collaborative commissions and two concert series, featuring guest artists such as Heloise Werner (The Hermes Experiment), Neil Luck, Laura Moody and Bastard Assignments, alongside performances of Jennifer Walshe, Florent Ghys, Cassandra Miller, David Lang, and many others.

 

In 2017, they recreated  two albums for live strings with Mercury Award-nominated singer Susheela Raman and performed internationally with Gondrong Gunarto Gamelan (Java) and Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwals (Pakistan)

 

Since 2015, they have worked with multi-sensory arts collective Bittersuite, creating large-scale immersive experiences, including Held,  a home listening experience developed in response to the Covid-19 crisis.