welcome to afflatus ensemble

My friend Sam remembered my vision of creating an ensemble when we were at the same high school in Auckland, New Zealand. I am grateful to Sam who is now my lawyer and has agreed to be the official lawyer for the ensemble as well.

I have founded this ensemble for one simple reason - to be the platform for those passionate young aspiring musicians who truly deserves to have an opportunity to gather and perform music together.

As a pianist, I’ve been performing always alone on the stage. Some pianists love it where as I always felt lonely being on the stage. All I ever wanted was to play music with group of musicians - my friends. Perhaps this was reason why I enjoyed performing piano concertos more than giving recitals. I loved and I love being surrounded by musicians.

Living through two nationwide lockdowns in New Zealand during the ongoing current Covid-19 pandemic, opportunities to make music with group of musicians became harder - in fact, trying to give public concerts became harder with ever so much changing government restrictions all the time.

Regardless, I feel truly proud to have decided to launch afflatus ensemble on January 6th 2021. It was all arranged and organised in 3 weeks. I am grateful to our artists who have decided to join the ensemble under my direction despite having absolutely no idea about the ensemble. With two days of rehearsals we gave our first launching concert on the 3rd day. I would have been satisfied with just 20 people in the audience but we had 88 people in the showroom which only had maximum capacity space of 60 people. What a diverse audience we had. Particularly, I was moved and touched to see the indigenous Māori/Pasifika community with beautiful dresses and flowers on their ears who all came to support their family member in the ensemble. Wholesome.

Without the openness from the ensemble artists, this ensemble wouldn’t have been possible nor it will be possible at all in the future hence I would like to express my gratitude once again to all artists.

Now, let’s make more music together.

 Jason Bae (Auckland, New Zealand 2021)