String Quartets at weddings

As much as I hate to admit it, I actually enjoy playing at peoples’ weddings. My string quartet started out doing a few weddings to pay its way and somehow turned into some behemoth. I like being busy.

 

Last year we played at 46 weddings, ranging from the extravagant wedding with a cake atop a fountain to the stylish and understated ceremony for 30 guests. We played for brides with enourmous trailing white gowns, and those wearing simple gold floral dresses. We played in Abbeys and cathedrals, and we played in small country hotels and private houses. We played outside castles, and we played on cliff-tops overlooking the sea. We played at a lot of weddings.

I enjoy the fact that, as a part of the quartet, I’m helping to make someone else’s day special. I like the constant interaction with the audience (although if I ever have another wedding where a drunk guest asks for ‘Amarillo’ again and again then I won’t be held responsible for my actions). I like the fact that the guests show their appreciation, smile and say thank you.

Somehow you just don’t get that in a concert situation. I know a lot of my friends and colleagues don’t agree with that statement, but hear me out. How often do you get to see a member of the audience? If you go to the bar at half-time perhaps, but then most audiences take that imaginary screen between themselves and the stage into the interval (the muso’s are often left at one end of the bar). Both before and after the event we use our special artists’ entrance to seperate us from the audience. As a performer it is almost impossible to make eye-contact with audience members – most people would not even recognise close family members whilst on stage looking out into the masses.

With weddings there is a genuine interest in you as a musician. You get asked questions by guests whilst you are playing, about you personally and your instrument. There have been a few times a guests’ curiosity has ended with them playing my cello. The audience doesn’t have the programme presented to them, with our quartet they can choose what we play to them. They come and go as they please, walking around the venue instead of sitting in a regimented way in fear of moving in case it makes some sort of forbidden noise.

Last weekend we played at Sarah’s cousins’ wedding, and this brought it home to me. This is how music began – music making amongst family and friends in homely surroundings – before it turned into formal suits in venues seating 1,000+ punters. It was fun. It was thought-provoking. Perhaps most importantly, it reminded me what music should be about.