The Burlington String Quartet Quality playing from four professional musicians The Burlington String Quartet is an established and versatile string quartet that specialises in performing classical and light string music for all occasions. They have considerable professional experience at providing music for both church weddings and civil ceremonies, as well as performing background music during drinks receptions and wedding breakfasts. They have a vast musical repertoire and invite you to make any specific requests or you can simply leave musical choices to them (which is what most people do!) All four players are freelance and also perform with many of the top London orchestras. In addition to numerous weddings previous engagements have included awards ceremonies and formal dinners for companies such as BT, Granada, Rank Xerox and events at many prestigious venues such as The Cafe Royal, The Ritz, The Savoy, The Royal Naval College, English Heritage & Classic FM. They also provided the background music for the international launch of the film ‘Titanic’ and accompanied The Vienna State Ballet on their visit to London, to commemorate Mozart’s bi-centenary. The Burlington String Quartet will enhance your wedding or event with top quality playing enabling you and your guests to relax and fully enjoy their musical entertainment.

The Ceremony

For both church services and civil ceremonies, the quartet will happily play music as the guests arrive and a processional for the Bride’s Entrance. Generally in church services, an organist would accompany hymns, but they would be willing to do so if required. At civil ceremonies, where no religious music is allowed, there are still a number of opportunities for the inclusion of musical items.

If you have a favorite piece of music, this could be interpolated into the ceremony at a strategic point, or they could accompany a singer in either a classical, operatic or lighter item (e.g. ‘The Power of Love’, ‘Evergreen’, ‘Love Changes Everything’) They regularly work with vocalists, who will sing up to 5 items at your ceremony. The Signing of the Register is another point at which music is usually played. Again, there are plenty of well known pieces that the quartet could play, or you could have a singer or another instrumentalist perform as well. This invariably leads into the Final Processional piece, and the quartet are happy to play again at this point. Their “standard package” at wedding receptions is to play for the drinks reception, through the wedding breakfast, and to the end at the beginning of the speeches. This Quartet usually play a selection of classical and light music for the reception, but can bias the selection one way or the other at your request. They have a vast repertoire, but do not bring everything with them automatically, and they invite you to choose your specific likes (or dislikes), or simply let them choose for you (which is what most people do!) They are quite happy to play music outside, as long as they are not playing in direct sunlight, wind or rain, or they can play just inside as your guests wander outside. During your meal, they are again reasonably flexible. Please remember that they will need a certain amount of room to perform. It is usually best to place them towards the middle of the room, so that their sound will radiate. If they are at one end of the room, some guests will probably not hear them, whilst others will find their sound rather overbearing! The Burlington Quartet always give their clients the choice of dress code for the event: White Tie, Black Tie, White Jackets, Blue Waistcoats.

Music Samples

Repertoire