After Dinner Speakers: Bond, Faith Hill, Noor Jordan

Bond are four sexy, sassy and spectacularly-gifted young women who have been credited with the sensational reinvention of the classical string quartet. Using both well-honed technical skills and innate flair, their arrangements are laced with tinges of everything from trance and house music to Salsa and traditional East European folk songs. The result is dramatic, compelling, seductive and sparklingly original. Bond are Haylie Ecker (first violinist), Eos (second violinist), Tania Davis (viola) and Gay-Yee Westerhoff (cello). They were Introduced to each other by legendary concert promoter Mel Bush. With their outstanding individual musical pedigrees the quartet began to share a vision: there was to be no stiff bow ties or flowing black dresses, and neither did they intend to perform sitting down in front of reams of sheet music at the mercy of a magesterial conductor. The aim was to be a breath of complete fresh air - although classical in their instrumental make-up, the quartet refused to be restrained by exisitng genres and traditions. 2001 and everything has fallen beautifully into place. Their mission to conquer the world, territory by territory, is almost complete. In just nine months since the release of their explosive debut single ‘Victory’, bond have snatched no less than ten No.1’s and have reached Gold status four times and Platinum twice from countries such as the UK, Austria, Holland, Chile, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Sweden, France, Bulgaria, Switzerland and the US. bond’s fresh, modern and distinctively pert performances have wowed audiences in every nation as they continue to govern the current music scene with their sensational first album ‘Born’ which has sold over 1 million copies worldwide. The foxy foursome have overthrown both the classical and pop charts, entering the top ten in both the Swedish and Italian pop charts. They were the highest entry as the first female instrumental band to enter the UK pop charts ever (acknowledged by Guinness World Records), and they have just conquered the US, going straight in as No.1 in the Classical/Crossover Chart and as No.2 in the New Artists Album chart. So colossal has been their meteoric rise, bond have left no prisoners and the likes of their classical and pop counterparts such as Charlotte Church, Sarah Brightman and Andrew Lloyd Webber as well as David Gray, Coldplay and Lenny Kravitz have been forced to surrender into the jaws of defeat. As the first all-girl string quartet to appear in the pop charts, to sell a million albums and to pose naked, bond are also the first string quartet to attract more media coverage than any other string quartet before them. Such attention has brought in a flood of sponsorhip deals including stylish Jaguar cars, luxurious Raymond Weill watches and glossy Pantene Pro-v hair care. Their secret? A combination of brilliant talent, ravishing good-looks, a clever mix of music and grit determination to succeed - all the ingredients which make the classical string quartet that is bond.