Performance
Solo and accompanied recital programmes for concert halls, cultural centres, universities, museums and festivals, in classical repertoire and in crossover programming that reaches audiences a purely classical evening would not.
Florida, United States
The inner voice of an ensemble, made the centre of one.
PS Bray Collective is a music performance, artistic production and cultural programming company built around the viola — in the concert hall, the recording studio and the classroom.
A specialised artistic enterprise, not a booking agency.
The companyThe viola sits in the middle of the string family. It is the voice that binds the others together, rarely the one carrying the tune, and the players who take it up tend to spend their careers inside collective work — quartets, sections, ensembles, studio dates.
PS Bray Collective takes that discipline and builds a company from it. We present concert and recital programmes, form chamber ensembles for specific projects, collaborate with orchestras, record for film and studio productions, design music education programmes for schools and communities, train teachers, and publish pedagogical work.
These are not separate businesses. Performance builds the standing that brings educational partners to the table; teaching produces the methodology that becomes published work; recording connects the company to producers and composers who commission again. Each supports the others.
Six kinds of work, one artistic standard, held by one artist.
Practice
What we doChamber music
Ensembles formed for particular projects and programmes, including collaborations with musicians based in the United States. The scale a presenter can afford, with the artistic weight of a full programme.
Collaboration
Work alongside professional orchestras, including large-format productions and film-in-concert performances that demand live synchronisation to picture and exacting section discipline.
Soundtrack recording
Session and soundtrack work for film, television, advertising and record productions — as performer, and as the person who assembles and directs the string ensemble a score calls for.
Cultural production
Themed artistic programmes for cultural institutions, embassies, foundations and municipalities, where the work is commissioned on institutional trust rather than commercial booking alone.
Education
Workshops, masterclasses and instruction for schools, conservatories, youth orchestras and community programmes, including inclusive and adaptive teaching, alongside training programmes for teachers themselves.
Artistic direction
Susana Bray
Susana Bray is Artistic Director, Principal Performing Artist and Music Educator of PS Bray Collective. A violist trained at the Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo in Porto, with advanced studies at the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra in Lisbon as a Luso-American Foundation scholar, she has built a career across Portugal, Cape Verde, Luxembourg, India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
She was part of the founding group of the National Orchestra of Cape Verde, where she served as principal viola. She founded and ran the Opus Quatro String Quartet for seven years, directing its programming, partnerships and projects. She spent eight years as a core string member of Tony Carreira’s touring ensemble, performing to audiences of hundreds of thousands. Her quartet was chosen to record the soundtrack of Pedro e Inês, the highest-grossing Portuguese film of 2018, and she has recorded with Anselmo Ralph, Paulo de Carvalho and Marco Paulo.
Alongside the performing work she has taught in social-intervention music programmes, developed an adaptive methodology for students of widely differing needs, trained teachers at the invitation of Luxembourg’s national institute of teacher education, and written a multilingual music education series for children. She has worked with the Coordination of Portuguese Language Education for Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands, part of the Camões Institute network, performing at the official Portuguese Diploma Award Ceremony before an audience of more than five hundred.
In 2020 the British portrait photographer Alistair Morrison, whose work hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London, sought international musicians for Time to Pause, a documentary drawing together a thousand people from over a hundred countries during lockdown. He chose her. The film won the Purpose Award and was selected for the Göteborg Film Festival.
Ensembles & orchestras
- National Orchestra of Cape Verde — founding group, principal viola
- Opus Quatro String Quartet — founder and manager
- Orquestra Filarmonia das Beiras
- Orquestra de Gaia — section leader
- European Academic Orchestra
Stages
- MEO Arena, Lisbon
- Casa da Música, Porto
- Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon
- L'Olympia and Palais des Sports, Paris
- Dubai Opera
- Philharmonie Luxembourg
Recording
- Pedro e Inês — feature film soundtrack
- Sim — album with João Farinha, Fado ao Centro
- Harmony Under One Sky — Emirati Musicians' Association
- Time to Pause — documentary, Göteborg Film Festival official selection
Institutional
- Europe Day solo concert, European Commission
- Fondation EME, Luxembourg
- Instituto Camões and the Portuguese Embassy in Luxembourg
- Dubai Culture & Arts Authority — certified creative talent
- Vote of Commendation, Municipal Assembly of Ponte de Lima
Education and teacher training
ProgrammesThe company's teaching begins from a practical problem: how to reach a student the standard method does not reach. That question was worked out in a social-intervention music programme in Coimbra, teaching viola to children of widely differing needs — among them a student with a visual impairment and a student on the autism spectrum — in conditions where instruments were scarce.
What came out of it is a way of teaching that moves the instrument away from a visual model and into listening, touch and vibration, that uses improvised and recycled materials where instruments are unavailable, and that puts students in the position of explaining the instrument to each other.
That methodology now underpins the company's school and community work, its family programmes, and the training it delivers to other teachers.
Programmes offered
- String and general music workshops for schools and youth programmes
- Masterclasses for conservatory and advanced students
- Inclusive and adaptive instruction
- Parent-and-child music learning
- Teacher training, including music in language learning
- Community and cultural programming with local partners
Catalogue
Published workThe company publishes and distributes pedagogical and artistic work in digital form — instructional books, sheet music and online courses, available through digital platforms and the company's own store.
PT · EN · FR · ES
Pequenos Músicos, Grandes Conquistas
A music education series for children, developed across multiple volumes and prepared in four languages. The foundation of the company's catalogue.
PT
Pula-Pula Saber
Educational music content for young children, extending the series into video.
Materials
MediaMaterials for presenters, schools and producers. Recordings and programme notes will be added here.
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Artist biography
Biography and career summary for programme books and publicity.
Enquiries
ContactBookings and programming
Education partnerships
Schools, conservatories and community programmes are welcome to write to the same address with the age group, format and dates in mind.
Recording and session work
For soundtrack and studio enquiries, please include the production, the instrumentation required and the recording window.