The quartet’s busy schedule includes appearances at concert venues throughout Britain and Europe, recording film soundtracks, radio and television broadcasts, educational projects and masterclasses.
Solaris is one of this country’s leading interpreters of Entartete Musik – music banned by the Nazis. Gideon Klein, Hans Krasa and Pavel Haas are among the talented composers from this dark period of history whose music the quartet is helping to keep alive. The quartet works closely with the Imperial War Museum and Beth Shalom National Holocaust Centre to bring performances of this little-heard music to festivals and concert halls throughout the United Kingdom. Solaris was recently invited to play at the German Embassy for an international Holocaust education seminar.
The quartet has a strong commitment to new music with several works having been dedicated to the group, including Barrington Pheloung’s String Quartet no.9,William Attwood’s Contracorrientes and a song cycle based on A.E.Houseman’s A Shropshire Lad, the poems being set by several young composers. Solaris has also collaborated with virtuoso melodeon player Luke Daniels in his project The Lost Music of the Gaels performing throughout the UK and to a sell-out Royal Festival Hall. In 2009, the quartet finished a major collaboration with the Imperial War Museum called In Memoriam - a composition competition for young composers taking inspiration from the exhibition of the same name commemorating the 90thanniversary of the end of the 1st World War. The second competition is currently being planned.
Solaris is also active in the education field having enjoyed a highly productive residency at the London College of Music. They regularly give workshops to a wide range of students including a highly successful music and ICT presentation, Strings n Things, aimed at primary school level.
The quartet have recently released their debut CD for Blue Jelly Records – The Mosaic Nomad, The music of G I Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann.