November 9, 2011 – This week, the Grammy-nominated ARC Ensemble announced its exclusive representation by the powerhouse European management group Konzertdirektion Schmid (KDS). The move significantly raises the group's European profile through additional performance and touring opportunities.

ARC is renowned for its "Music In Exile" series, which focuses on the works of composers exiled from Germany as a result of the upheavals of the Second World War. The project has won universal acclaim on international concert stages in the U.S., Netherlands, Hungary, Sweden, Italy, Poland, and Canada, among others. Two of their recordings, Right Through the Bone and On the Threshold of Hope, have been recognized with Grammy nominations. 

Formed in 2002, the ARC Ensemble features faculty members of The Royal Conservatory's Glenn Gould School. The core ensemble comprises a piano quintet plus clarinet, with the addition of strings or woodwinds as required. The Ensemble's Artistic Director is Simon Wynberg.

KDS represents some of the world's best-known classical artists in Europe, and the ARC Ensemble joins an elite group of musicians which includes Yo-Yo Ma, Yefim Bronfman, Christia Tetzlaff, the Scharoun Ensmble and The King's Singers, all of whom have performed at The Royal Conservatory's Koerner Hall in Toronto.

In association with the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Centre and the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto
 
> Download Programme

The ARC Ensemble perform the opening movement of Paul Ben-Haim's Clarinet Quintet at the Enav Center, Tel Aviv.

James Conlon, Honorary Chairman of the ARC Ensemble talks about the Music in Exile tour to Israel in March 2011.

Benjamin Bowman – violin, and David Louie – piano, perform Mendelssohn's D minor Sonata movement which survives in an incomplete manuscript in the Mendelssohn collection of the Berlin State LIbrary. The work was completed by David Louie and its score can be downloaded here.

The ARC Ensemble's much-praised video Honour Bound, The Exile of Adolf Busch – directed by James Murcoch and produced by Simon Wynberg and James Murdoch, funded by Bravo!Fact.

"An impressive group of musicians..."
– The Washington Post, Nov 2008
 
"Passion, polish and vitality."
– The New York Times, Nov 2008
 
"Sets the skin rippling at every turn, with its ear-tingling corporate intonation and magical phrasing..."
– The Strad, June 2008

"A message from a reader sent me back to the disc On the Threshold of Hope... Weinberg's 1944 Piano Quintet is as searingly eloquent as the big Shostakovich chamber works of the same period. Members of the Arc Ensemble play with fierce conviction..."
– Alex Ross, December 2007

"Recently I became entranced by a disk of the 1944 Piano Quintet, by the ARC Ensemble, and began to perceive the subtle ways in which Weinberg stands apart from his hero."
– Alex Ross, The New Yorker, September 2011

"Weinberg, a friend and follower of Shostakovich, died in partial obscurity in 1996, but his music is undergoing something of a revival… As a point of departure, I would recommend a superb disc of Weinberg's Clarinet Sonata, "Jewish Songs" and Piano Quintet, with members of the Arc Ensemble."
– Alex Ross, The New Yorker Blog, August 29, 2011