Croatian Cantus Ensemble was put into this world to play exclusively modern and contemporary music that was lacking in Croatian concert halls and in audiences’ ears. Formed in 2011, the ensemble was invented just as a festival ensemble for the Music Biennale Zagreb, but it continued to work unmercifully on its quality, putting on its programs the best of the best and the newest of the newest.

Today Cantus Ensemble is a distinguished and especially praised part of the Croatian cultural scene. Being one of the very few Croatian contemporary ensembles, the ensemble has chosen to present to its audience a broad repertoire of contemporary music, starting from Stravinsky and Hindemith.

The core of the Cantus Ensemble consists of 14 musicians, basically a string quintet, a wind septet, piano and 2 percussion players, but can open up to larger formations when needed. The Ensemble played all over the world, including China, Mexico, Canada and practically all of Europe. From the concert season 2006/2007 the ensemble has its own concert cycle, Cantus & Lisinski, in coproduction with Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall in Zagreb.

Through the concerts of the Cantus Ensemble one might follow a traditional classical music form, but with an especially open, enthusiastic atmosphere – “sometimes almost as a rock concert”, they say. In the NewAud project the Ensemble wanted to work on every aspect of the concert infrastructure, content, form and message, and networking with other art forms, disciplines and genres, to change the perception of the classical concert form.

The concerts by Cantus Ensemble resulted in the following resource

Mixing contemporary music and animated film

Cantus Ensemble joined forces with young students of animated film to create a unique experience of contemporary music. The students created animated films to be screened during the live performance of the ensemble. The goal was to address a new, young audience by mixing art forms and ditching the formal concert hall. This evaluation report describes the concept and process of the creative collaboration and sums up the response from the audience and what the ensemble learned from the experience.