Quatuor Ellipsos – Renowned French Saxophone Quartet – 32

Barry Cockcroft:
Ellipsos — thank you very much for, first of all, playing a beautiful concert here in Columbia. It was lovely to hear you play and the audience loved it. As you saw, very good reaction from the audience. So it is always happy when people can play the music they love and then also the public also have that same feeling. Is good. Thank you.

Barry Cockcroft:
And thank you for taking the time this morning. I know there’s some site seeing and nice things to do here in [Kali 00:00:38], but you’ve taken the time to talk with me, so thank you. I would love to know how this group got started because you’ve been playing together for many years.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
Yeah, now the adventure of Ellipsos started 16 years ago. We don’t count the years, after years because we love to pass time together and it’s a music story, it’s a dream story for us because we live our passion every day, every moment, every seconds. We are connected together. We are only three this morning so we miss one guy, he had a saxophone, [Giu 00:01:20] is not with us because he take his flight this morning. Yesterday evening. We are three. A quartet, three we do also. We can play together at three, but no we are four.

Ellipsos is a group of four friends. Four brothers. It’s more than friendly. I think it’s really about brothers. We met together during university in summer University in [inaudible 00:01:54] academy and [Gap 00:01:56] University in France. And the moment we passed together was amazing because we had teachers amazing with a [inaudible 00:02:07] quartet, with [inaudible 00:02:08] with many other teachers. And that’s why we discovered the passion from the quartet. And we started in 2004 to create our quartet about saxophone, classical saxophone, but not only classical music, world music, a little bit jazz music, and especially element that we write the music, our own music, our own arrangement.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Sure the arrangement is something which is particular, we particularly I will say defend because we have the capacity of doing it, thanks to Nicola makes a lot of, not a lot, absolutely all the arrangements we play. And this is a great quality we have inside the four of us. And this is a way for us to make the repertoire larger and larger and larger. Such as we can order some works to composers that we do also sure we do it less, but we do too. And other saxophonists do it too, and this is mainly our main way to enlarge the network.

Barry Cockcroft:
So these arrangements that you do are published?

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Some are. We have a collection at [Biudu 00:03:52], which is a French editor. And then this is first, we feel very lucky to be able to offer these arrangements to everyone who wants because we’ve been asked a lot before we had this collection to give these scores. And we’ve done it very little that it was a bit difficult because there is difficulties about propriety and-

Barry Cockcroft:
Copyright.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Copyright exactly. So this collection is now for us a very great help.

Barry Cockcroft:
I guess sometimes if you have a unique repertoire, because you’ve written the arrangements, you maybe don’t want everybody else playing the same pieces, because in some way that would mean everybody’s heard this one before by the student quartet or this other quartet. So, maybe for a while you wanted to keep these pieces a little bit to yourselves. It seems now you are very happy to-

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Just share. Exactly that’s it. We really feel we like people to play this too and propose another interpretation of this course because we play this course, but this is just one way to play it and we’ll love to hear other ways to play them.

Barry Cockcroft:
I’m very curious with the arrangement. Are you trained? Have you trained in composition and harmony and all of these things or you are a natural?

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
No, I trained. I studied harmony and orchestration and analysis at Nante Conservatoire. It’s very important to be able to make good arrangements. And so to have a good knowledge about it, so for me it’s very important to make, to have this formation to have this knowledge about arrangement.

Barry Cockcroft:
Do you think in the saxophone world, we are often playing new music, new music, new music, new music. Always new music. Many people playing new music. It’s not that many people playing a classical repertoire or transcriptions and arrangements. Do you think this is something that other quartets should do more of.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
For my part I think the repertoire is very little for a saxophone. We can’t to be too much excision about our repertoire. I think the choices of repertoire for students is to create the … we have to create music. That’s why many saxophonists play their own music. And I think it’s problematic but with the time if we compare with the violin repertoire for example, the world has changed because in the past every musician give the partition the score hands by hands. No internet, no connection. So it was very slow. The time was slow. Now, all is fast.

So when someone in Japan do something at the side of the world they know instantly immediately, and so it changed all the approach is very different now and I think a saxophone student and saxophone repertoire is more and more connected and we are more and more connected and curious each other. So Nicolas, yes.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
I think saxophone repertoire is not so big, but it exists. And at the beginning with Ellipsos we made a lot of arrangements and we became a little bit famous thanks to that. We were [inaudible 00:08:25] for example, but now with our teachers such as [inaudible 00:08:33], a famous clarinettist who told us, if you want to have a good career you have to create your own repertoire and not only transcriptions. And we thought about it and now I think we have to defend also the saxophone repertoire. And that’s why we on each recording we have transcriptions, but also an original repertoire. And the last one United Careers, only original repertoire. And I think it’s very important too because we can’t create only transcriptions.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
The time, my obsession is the time because when you do something at one moment you have to think to the future and when you create music now, you have to think through the future in 40 years, 50 years, 60 years. And so if you do both, you can do new music with old music. With [inaudible 00:09:48] you can do new music. Really for example we play Bach, many Bach with Thiery [shkish 00:09:57] an organist, amazing organist and composer or so. And Thiery, when we play together we have the impression to play contemporary music with Bach really. And so the feeling of time is completely stopped. And so in reality all music or new music is mixed.

Barry Cockcroft:
This is a very practical question, do you all live in the same town?

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
We don’t.

Barry Cockcroft:
So to play so well, how do you rehearse and how often do you meet to do this?

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
There are two points to answer this. The first one is the past and the very beginning of the quartet where we used to spend at least one whole day a week to rehearse and to spend time together from 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning to 9:00 PM. And this was when we still lived in the same city, something like, more or less. But it was easier than today. And today we still rehearse one day every two weeks. We still take time to call each other many times in the week and we have particularly one appointment a week to call each other four, as four. Once a week and we spend like two hours phone call to talk about organisation and which music we’re going to play next time next year or something like that. And also our lives because as Paul-Fathi LACOMBE was saying in the beginning we are also friends and brothers, and we have to share everything about our lives and that we need these times to share.

Barry Cockcroft:
So you take some time to do the business? To talk about the real structure and the future and what you’re working on and then you have time just for music.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Yeah, we need this time because we have nobody to take care of us, we have no agent. So we’re doing it all by ourselves and we use our full qualities and characters to make it work. Some are more talkative, some are more pragmatic, some are more artistic. And these four qualities and characters make it work.

Barry Cockcroft:
The different qualities combined together to make something unique.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Exactly. This makes Ellipsos.

Barry Cockcroft:
Do you ever find that you disagree?

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Of course we do.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
We have to stop now. I begin.

We have a rule, a simple rule, that when you say something it’s not a personal thing. It seems very simple but in reality it’s very important because when you said to someone, I said to Nicola, I don’t agree with you about this, it means not I don’t like him but I don’t at this point is particular point. And when you think to that, you have we feel together and we have a lot of rules about respect, tolerance, about each person has his place in the group, and we are not, nobody is a sheep. No sheep in the quartet. It’s very important because in saxophone quartets sometimes we learn who is the sheep, sometimes we ask who is the sheep. Some offenders they thought it’s me because I’m the soprano, but no I’m not at all the sheep. The real sheep is the others, but not me. Yes, each person has his place and importance and what is important is the arguments arguments arguments arguments.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
We don’t agree always and sometimes there are big arguments, but like you said Paul-Fathi LACOMBE, nothing is personal. So sometimes we are so angry, so furious that the next minutes it’s finished.

It’s finished.

It’s solved.

The storm is passed.

Yeah. And it’s very important in the group that we not always have the same feeling, the same way to think, but we have to speak to our view and after we have to find a compromise.

Yeah we have four characters and then four opinions and then we have to express them to make the compromise and make it work. It makes it even more richer you would say to have these four opinions to make things move forward.

Barry Cockcroft:
You know what I think? You guys should go into the business of counselling for marriage.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
Yeah, you are not the first to say towards that. It’s true, it’s like a bit marriage together, but we are all engaged in our personal life, all of us. But it’s the second marriage if I can say that. In reality when you do a group, it’s like a boat. Go to the sea and go to around the world. And you are a team. You are a real team.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
And yesterday we spoke about our career to the students in Kali and we said that we are four brothers, so we have family. It’s more than friendship. It’s a real family and in a family it’s like wedding. You will have the same family to all the life with good and bad moments. So that’s why you said, wedding counselling, but that’s exactly that-

Barry Cockcroft:
You share the musical decisions in the group. Do you have roles? For example is there a person in charge of social media? Is someone in charge of being the agent, finding work? Do you have different roles in administration?

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Yeah, we have the … our different qualities leads us into different roles in the administration and organisation. Paul-Fathi LACOMBE is the most talkative so he deals with the relations with concert organisers. He also deals with the communication on the web such as Facebook, twitter, Instagram and all that. Nicolas is the music maker. So he deals with the arrangements and also the musical programmes for each concert. Julian is more like an organiser about planning, logistics. And what do I do, I deal with-

Barry Cockcroft:
You play great.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Okay, the others do too. Well, I do deal with papers and technical, sonarization, microphones and all these kind of stunts and all these kinds of stuff.

Barry Cockcroft:
And that leads me to the next question which is, you have a very large social following and also you have produced many videos that you release onto YouTube. This is a whole other job to do this work. So how important are the videos and the social contact in building your followers, how important is this to, one building your careers but also finding future work.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
Actually I have a lot of video is very important for us to be seen, to share. At the beginning when we had one video of one concert, we were I know I’ll make a mistake, I know this here, this intention is not good. And after we think about it and we said, no, the most important is to be seen. And so it’s live concerts. It’s not recording. It’s better to be seen in one video and more video than to keep the video for you it’s useless.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
We feel it’s better to share than to, as you say to keep it for us. Even if it’s not perfect anyway it’s life so it couldn’t be perfect.

So years after years we made a lot of videos. We still have some in our minds. We are going to create other stuff on YouTube for example, but Paul-Fathi LACOMBE is sharing a lot. Yeah, this is one of our priorities is to keep memories and record as much for audio than video. It’s very important today to have a visual memory from our concerts.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
And about organisations and about concert organisation, it’s very important for the president of festival to see what you do before. Because when you propose a programme with a composer who is not very famous or not recorded, not, or just they don’t know that they compose it, what is it so … You can look here. It’s more simple, yeah.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
And at the end when we shared a lot of video, the mix tape, we thought, maybe while we shouldn’t do a clip, a movie clip because in POP music there are a lot of … each time you create a song you have your movie clip video. So we think and we created, we made two with [Anya 00:21:22] by [inaudible 00:21:24] and Pearls by Jean Baptiste.

Barry Cockcroft:
The good thing with the video clip of course is you can have the music perfect. And the visual also how you want. It’s kind of a combination, maybe everybody knows that you’re not playing live, but it give you a more artistic tune as opposed to a concert which is another category.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
Yes it is. Because when you go to YouTube you can heard recording and professional recording and live. And people prefer lives really because the live is you can’t [inaudible 00:22:11]-

Barry Cockcroft:
Trick.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
Cheat. Yes. You can’t that. And people see, okay they do that, they are not-

Barry Cockcroft:
Afraid.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
They are not afraid, sorry, they are not afraid to do what they do. And they are a bit generous because you give no money, nothing. You give. Just give. And after it’s like a present people take the present or don’t take, but it’s for us. It’s for them.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Yeah actually a video clip and live recording is in my opinions very different. We don’t communicate the same thing and on a live recording you have the communication of the energy, generosity as you were saying Paul-Fathi LACOMBE, and in the video clip, the music is more perfect and you share, you communicate another message with the pictures, with the video. You can prepare the story of the video clip and then well, we still have to improve some things about this stories. And for us we feel it’s a very beginning for classical music to have video clips and we have many things to start looking at and to imagine.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
And after for example when we play pearls by jean Baptiste live in concert, we think about the story of The movie clip. And it helps us to play and have the good interpretation because we have the images and it gives us energy of the movie clip.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Particularly because the movie clip has been made by the composer. We made the movie. We took the videos and he told us what to do, how to be famous, but we didn’t know what was the final story after that. And then he made the addition of the videos and then we got the idea he had. And then now that we have this story in mind, yeah, it helps us to play differently.

Barry Cockcroft:
This is a very detailed question, but once you start having a lot of followers on Facebook, it’s actually difficult to reach them because you can only reach a few each time just because of the way the Facebook marketing works. So have you engaged any form of advertising to help promote your activities?

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
We do sometimes buy some advertisements for our concerts. On Facebook you can make an advertisement for local people when you make a concert, so we sometimes do that.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
Yeah, about social media and Facebook is a reality to … because you can’t communicate to all the world, it’s impossible, technically it’s impossible, but we have two counts. One friends account and one official page, and with the Friends account it’s more story about, it’s more family, more friends, very new of us. The saxophone family we call of people who were in this account is the saxophone family.

And for the official page it’s a bit different. It’s more official, even meant more and you can reach more people. I don’t know maybe five, forty five thousand people followers, and it’s not important that they like what you do because there are a lot of information Facebook, information information all the time. All seconds. But what is important is just the line of what you do. When you don’t know who, where the quartet where is he, you go up the page and you see if they do a concert at this town or at this town. It’s just a repair. But for us Facebook is not the real life. Reality. The real life is on the scene-

Barry Cockcroft:
Stage.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
On the stage. And to meet people it’s more important to share with 400 people or 500 people on the audience than on Facebook maybe 4000 people. Is not the same energy, not the same link.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
But we can’t make without it.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
Of course.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Today is very important and it’s your function in the group and you make it very well and because we meet a lot of people and they know what we are doing because they see on Facebook, they see on twitter. So I think is very important today.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
Yeah, of course. Now of course everybody, you can’t do that, but for me it’s just a window. It’s a supplement, it’s one more window on the life. Just that’s all.

Barry Cockcroft:
And I guess this is very helpful to people listening, which channel, which social channel gives you the most, let’s say return. Stage?

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
I would say yeah, for sure. We were saying, as you said Nicolas, we had a kind of master conference today, yesterday here in kali. We said that there is no little concert hall or no best concert hall in the world to play in. Any stage is a great moment to share with the audience even if the audience is three people or 3000. Is the same. You can have the best emotional success I would say even with just three people in the audience. For me that’s social written is there. Difference is there.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
For example when [inaudible 00:28:44] has been nominated by the French Institute as academician invite us to play and during the reception maybe 200 people, only 200, but the quality of each person was maybe 10 people by each person. So sometimes one guy, one people, as in [inaudible 00:29:13] 10000 people.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
It’s like a super fan.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
Yeah. It’s like a big energy. Sometimes one has more energy than 1000. So it was very important to leave all music moments with everybody, each moment because each concert is a new beginning.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
And I agree with Silvan and Paul-Fathi LACOMBE. Because that’s why a career, a musician career is so long to build because the real energy and the real return is on stage. And so you have to play and play and play to have the return of a lot of people.

Barry Cockcroft:
So you’ve had the opportunity to travel throughout the world and more and more I think, your concerts are building up and I think you have bookings, many years into the future, which is very impressive. Have there been any experiences on the road that are a bit unusual, a bit funny, that you didn’t expect?

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
This is a very huge luck we had to travel throughout the world and yeah, to site see. And enjoy these different places in the world. Sometimes our family can join us after the concert and then some of us are staying with their family on some place. And yeah we usually have sometime has four ready to visit the place where we play and we make classic classes. So we feel very lucky about that.

It’s just that we can look quiet and calm but when we are four on tour, it’s very very funny and we are totally crazy. And it’s a way for us to keep playing together and to accept differences between us with how do you say?

[inaudible 00:31:42] and when we are together it’s very very crazy things and we live crazy things because it’s very funny.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Yeah, on stage people from the audience after the concert often say there is a real complicity between us four. This is something that is built during these moments I feel and these we have some moments and these touring moments, there we have this complicity built.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
For example in China tour, we tasted a lot of food we didn’t eat before. And one night we had a very spicy food and we were all crying and our lips were burning and after we went to the toilet and it was amazing. We have a lot of, yes, we have a lot of story. Where for example in Italy-

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
Are you sure you want that?

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
In Italy we had two or three concerts and the last concert we very good and we eat some Italian-

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
You eat.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
Yes, meat. Italian meat very good. Very good. Except Paul-Fathi LACOMBE. Paul-Fathi LACOMBE didn’t eat.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
I don’t feel it and I have reason I think.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
But it was very good.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
It was good yes, on the moment.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
And it was just the night before leaving and during the night I got up and I was, it’s not good at all. And so I went to the toilet and two seconds after I heard a knock knock knock, and what’s going on? It’s Silva I am not very good. Okay, but not me neither.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Yeah Nicolas HERROUET then said, I can’t open now. It will take some time. Then I went behind the door and saying, yes you have to be quick please. And then the third one was just behind me saying, I need to, so please please please. Well, this was not the … well, now we feel it fun, but at that time it was not that fun.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
And so, the night was complicated, but after we went to Roma. And we visited the Vatican.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
Yes, we were in Vatican yes.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
And we were not very in good mood and good health.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
Many people.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
Many people and we visited the Vatican with a stomach ache and it was very-

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
A very special day. But it was ten years ago. The story is … now the solution is us to have one bedroom by musicians. Sometimes we share the bedroom, but it was ten years ago now is finished. We go out a bit and yes, it’s important. It’s like a family. So when you go in vacation, in another country, you leave many many stories like that and why hide it. We love to, yes we don’t have any shame, shaming. No shame. No shame. Never shame, why? We have everybody has light inside him. And we have to go out this light of you, so if you have a share of something, if you hide something you tweet you tweet, so you cheat. And so don’t tweet, be yourself every time and sometime is very very funny of course.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
One last story.

Barry Cockcroft:
I have the time.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Of course. Yes, because in the quartet everybody forget something always. Parts or yes, and in Korea we leave Korea. We went to the airport and we were during the check in and I realised that I forgot all my passports and money to the hotel. And I was, no not possible. And I went to the information office. And in Korea Seoul is a huge huge town, I don’t know how I will leave Korea Seoul. And finally the person help us and find my passport in the bus because I forget it in the bus and they found it and they gave me back and it was amazing, but the three were just not very angry, very happy.

Barry Cockcroft:
Is there a piece of advice you could give to a young quartet starting up to enable them or to give them the chance to sustain a group and sustain their career to have the patience to allow to build. Is there something you could say to them?

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
I think it’s like a device for young, all begins to dream. If these four people, these four musicians has a collective dream, not the same dream, but the dream to play together it’s very important. We have to admire-

Barry Cockcroft:
Admire.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
… each person when you play with someone. You admire your alto, your tenor, your baritone. I think all can be possible.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
For me another advice, another yes, advice is to have a group. The most difficult is to be in the time to last in the time. So you have to be how do you say [obstinate 00:38:17]?

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
Obstination.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
To have obstination, obstinate and obstinate and yes.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
Yeah, they have few share frankly all these moments, this life times that we’ve just shared with you. You have to be frank and sincere when you play. Yeah, this is the most important thing is to be sincere when you play and when you share your opinion about how to play this music, to make the compromise, everyone has to be very sincere.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
And even to teach each other. We said the best teacher is yourself. The best teacher of the world is yourself. And in the quartets, the best teacher is your friends and so you can have many help of your tenor, baritone, and [inaudible 00:39:29] they said to me, okay please do that. But they take, they left me, and they are my teachers in reality. They are my teachers. And it’s very important to have a reference and it’s not a problem of ego. It’s not the problem not at all. Of course we can progress all the time of the life and the saxophone is never reached. So I think what is important is to help together, to help.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
And we said yesterday, because they ask the same question, and we said when we are on stage, because it’s for students who are graduating or in competitions, so sometime you forget to give and you are more on stage to show what you are playing, how you can play, and the most important is to give and not to show when you are on stage.

Barry Cockcroft:
Thank you very much for sharing your stories, your advice, and your wisdom for the saxophone and also music in general. Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure to see you again and I look forward to the next time.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Sylvain JARRY:
Thank you very much.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Paul-Fathi LACOMBE:
Thank you.

Quatuor Ellipsos – Nicolas HERROUET:
Thank you.