Rachel, Zephyr and Stephane met as students at King's College, Cambridge. An innocent idea to perform Purcell's Fantasias transformed into a large-scale event involving candles, projections, and new and old music performed concurrently on viols tuned to A415 Hz and modern instruments to 440. This performance in 2016 led them to form a musical and theatrical collective, rites.

​

Since, their projects have staged Arianna's abandonment on Naxos in a newly-commissioned immersive opera, developed film and made prints to music, and woven dream-like musical structures around recitations of Dante. They have collaborated with singers, composers, photographers and poets in events that surprise, educate, and enchant.

 

Dr Rachel Stroud is a baroque violinist and specialist on nineteenth-century performance. Her PhD was on Beethoven's late quartets.

​

Zephyr Brüggen is a theatre director with a particular interest in the role of the audience. She studied classics.

​

Stephane Crayton is a composer. He researches musical meaning; his PhD is about disorder.