What it is, is this...

05/07/2010

Eos Chater, violinist from eclectic British and Australian string quartet Bond talks to us about list making

I just seem to be making lists everywhere at the moment because there’s so much going on. We’ve started writing a new Bond album, which is exciting, and we’ve been travelling everywhere for one-off concerts.

I’m also working as a musical co-ordinator on a film this summer called Hunky Dory, set in a school in Swansea in the 1970’s. It’s a really authentic project because all the kids that’ll be in the film will be performing and playing the music as well; it’s hard work but definitely nice to try something different.

Bond has had quite a low profile in the UK to date. After the first record came out, we promoted it really well, but not so much with the second and third ones over here. We’ve carried on doing that everywhere else though.

We have a huge fan base abroad; we’ve toured Asia loads as well as America and Australia and we’re lucky to have such a diverse range of fans - kids, couples, teenagers and grandparents.

I don’t think any of us would describe our music as classical. Very early on we had a minor controversy involving us being kicked off the classical music charts. We describe our music as crossover; the stuff that we write tends to be quite pop sounding, but we have a lot of ethnic and Middle Eastern styles as well as the classical stuff. We see what styles work and just try to play what we like.

I’m from Cardiff, but all of us in the band live in London at the moment. I try to come back to Wales as much as possible because all of my family is here, whenever I ring up my mum and dad’s house, pretty much all my family is there apart from me.

We’re really excited about playing Llangollen Eisteddfod, it will be the first public concert we’ve done in a long time. Being Welsh, the Eisteddfod festivals form such a massive part of your upbringing and I’ve performed in a few Eisteddfod competitions when I was young and with the National Orchestra of Wales. But this is the first time Bond will be playing at one.

We’re going to perform some new stuff as well as the older favourites and see how the tracks go down with the crowd. It’s a nice experiment seeing how people react - that’s when the music really comes alive. We just want to keep enjoying what we’re doing. I think that’s one of the main reasons we’re still going ten years down the line.

Bond, Llangollen International Music Eisteddfod, July 8