Sirba Octet

In 2003 violinist Richard Schmoucler founded the Sirba Octet, an ensemble halfway between the classical tradition and the traditional music of Eastern Europe. He brought together five fellow musicians from the Paris orchestras, among them the Orchestre de Paris and the Orchestre National de France, together with a pianist, a cimbalom player and the arranger Cyrille Lehn.

The ensemble calls its style “Classic World”: a meeting of chamber music, symphonic writing and traditional instruments, rooted in a festive tradition. Its repertoire of klezmer, Yiddish and Romani music is reimagined in the arrangements of Cyrille Lehn.

Its first album, A Yiddishe Mame, was released by Naïve Classic in 2005, drawing on Slavic and Yiddish songs and on Richard Schmoucler’s family memories. Tantz! (La Dolce Volta, 2015; reissued by Deutsche Grammophon in 2017) is devoted to klezmer and Romani dances, and Sirba Orchestra! (Deutsche Grammophon, 2018) was recorded with the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège under Christian Arming. Its seventh album, Tsuzamen (2023), launched the ensemble’s own label, Sirba Records, for its twentieth anniversary; it evokes three peoples in exile, Armenians, Jews and Roma, and was premiered at the Philharmonie de Paris with the children’s choir of the Orchestre de Paris before being broadcast by France Télévisions. The ensemble’s albums have received a Choc Classica and an award from the European Association for Jewish Culture.

The Sirba Octet performs both as an octet and with orchestra, in France and abroad, at venues including the Philharmonie de Paris, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Musikverein in Vienna, the Shanghai Concert Hall and Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall, and at festivals such as La Folle Journée in Nantes and Japan, the Festival de Pâques, the Festival International de Piano de La Roque d’Anthéron and the Festival de Sylvanès. It has performed with European and Japanese orchestras, among them the Tonkünstler Orchestra under Fabien Gabel and the Orchestre National de Lille under Alexandre Bloch.

The ensemble has also collaborated with singer Isabelle Georges on Du Shtetl à New York (2008) and Yiddish Rhapsody (2009), and with Catherine Lara on an album released by Sony Music in 2012.