It was for the first time in a year that Seida had played together with a unique combination of musicians and as the sun was setting on the first night of our week at Hawkwood we sat together in the garden and looked at the moon. We had had our first run through of the Enescu Octet, the piece of music that we had chosen to bring to Hawkwood and the basis on which we were able to learn more about each other, what Seida Ensemble means and about Enescu himself. Communing in the evening to talk about our purpose, our experiments and ideas felt like a spark that had been lit was starting to grow.

It felt very exciting to live the music for the first time as a group. Practising the part at home was only like reading the blurb of a book, however the first read through as a group was an enthusiastic, life giving and shaky discovery. To be able to spend five days exploring this music together in depth was like digging out treasures.

The chaos, emotional depth and beauty inside the music revealed itself in our behaviour, energy and our relationship to each other as well as the music. There were waves of high intensity rehearsals and dancing at night time whilst playing folk tunes, to crashes of lying in the grass eating cake and taking a pensive wonder through the grounds. The environment of Hawkwood is a place where care is put into every aspect of living there, be it the home-grown food, the beautiful range of gardens, even the choice of toilet paper, and it started to translate into our work ethic and attitude.

One of our focuses during the week was on the launch of our well-being programme ‘music@work’. One afternoon we gathered into our sitting room with Simon Chadwick, an actor, stage fighter and voice-over artist.

Our drawing workshop was a moment to bring out our inner child and to create a piece of art to represent our collective vision of the Enescu Octet. Similarly to rehearsing music, we were able to observe the unique nature in which everyone put their pen to paper. Some confident and uninhibited, others more careful and pensive. The art piece travelled everywhere with us, becoming our mascot.