Sold-out Candlelight Concert series, featuring Canberra string quartet The Phoenix Collective, casting classical music in a new light

This week alone, the Phoenix Collective have sold out four shows in Canberra and one in Sydney, all of which are part of the Candlelight Concert series. Not surprisingly the shows scheduled over the next couple of months are also selling quickly.

As the name suggests, the series - which is hosted at the National Gallery of Australia's James Fairfax Theatre in Canberra - sees the string quartet bring classical music to life amongst hundreds of candles.

What's more the series - produced by the entertainment platform Fever - has a diverse range of themes. While one week the quartet may be playing the "expected" songs of Mozart and Vivaldi, the next they could be showcasing hits from contemporary artists such as Queen, Taylor Swift, and Daft Punk, or performing film scores.

This week's sold-out performances will see the Phoenix Collective perform film scores from composer Hans Zimmer, with songs from movies including The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean, Inception and Interstellar. These performances sold out so quickly that there are already four more Canberra concerts on sale for November and December.

"We use a whole variety of extended techniques with some of the programs, stuff that you wouldn't usually do in a classical concert where we're percussively hitting our instruments or creating sound effects so that we do sound more like a band, essentially," Phoenix Collective lead Dan Russell said.

"The Daft Punk program that we did was one of the rowdiest programs ever. We are slightly amplified often because the venues that we play aren't classical venues ... but the technician still had to keep cranking us up because the crowd was so loud, and on their feet and dancing.

"Sometimes those pop songs work really well strung up on different instruments. Music is a language that is very versatile. And people all over the world can relate and understand and it goes beyond genres."

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The Phoenix Collective is responsible for about 17 different programs for Fever, which has multiple musical outfits performing in more than 90 cities across the world.

What's more, the audiences these concerts attract are primarily under the age of 40 (more than 70 per cent).

"I would like to think that it also offers an opportunity for these audiences to transition to classical music a little bit," Russell said.

"They might be like, 'hey, look, these are the tunes that I love and I recognise from elsewhere, but these instruments sound great and are very versatile, and maybe I'll see these instruments play something else'.

"That would be nice if they're a very slow and transitional way to introduce classical music to the larger population that perhaps doesn't have an interest or doesn't know that they might have a future interest."

The next available tickets to see the Phoenix Collective perform Hams Zimmer in the Candlelight Concert series are on November 26 and December 9.

They will also present Vivaldi's Four Seasons on November 25 and December 16. For tickets go to feverup.com.

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