Echo Collective

Ensemble / Composer / Producer

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“Echo Collective don’t just play music beautifully, they become the music”
Joep Beving

Founded by Neil Leiter and Margeret Hermant, Echo Collective is a creative and diverse community of classically trained musicians and instrumentalists, based in Brussels. Their music can be described as “post-classical” or “neo-classical”, existing in a space to allow innovation in any direction and shedding the rigour of traditional classical music.

As well as performing and upcoming recordings of their own compositions, the group collaborates with contemporary composers, bands, film scoring and production, recording sessions and live tours. Past and on-going collaborations include Jóhann Jóhannsson, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Joep Beving, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Christina Vantzou, Daniel O’Sullivan, and Erasure.

Echo Collective – Jóhann Jóhannsson: Stuk | Yellow Lounge (live from Hamburg, 2019) © Deutsche Grammophon

This season Echo Collective sees performances at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Barbican London, Pardiso Amsterdam, Funkhaus Berlin, Philharmonie de Paris, Conde Duque Madrid and Ancienne Belgique, a venue that Echo Collective have a close and long-lasting relationship with. On tour, they will be performing extensively with Joep Beving, Winged Victory for the Sullen and Christina Vantzou.

Echo Collective was conceived when Hermant and Leiter collaborated with Adam Wiltzie and Dustin O’Halloran’s A Winged Victory For The Sullen. The American-born Leiter was introduced to Wiltzie by their mutual friend, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and musician Caroline Shaw. Since this inception, Leiter, and Belgian violinist and harpist Hermant, has gone on to perform as Echo Collective in venues such as Royal Albert Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam and L’Auditori Barcelona, as well as festivals such as Latitude, Big Ears, ATP, La Route du Rock, Eurosonic, Reeperbahn and Primavera.

In September 2019, they released “12 conversations with Thilo Heinzmann”, their album of the music of Jóhann Jóhannsson on Deustche Grammophon, receiving critical acclaim from Guardian (‘poignant beauty’) and Pitchfork. Prior to this Echo Collective released their breakthrough album “Echo Collective plays Amnesiac”, a re-working of the Radiohead album, in 2018, helping to establish their unique sound and firmly establishing them as the leading creative force in this overwhelmingly popular genre. 2020 sees Echo Collective release their own original music on 7K!