Yorkshire string quartet Ebor soars into success following popularity of Netflix regency drama Bridgerton

Violinist, Conor Woodcock, 28, who lives in York, started playing the instrument when he was just seven years old through group sessions at school.

He enjoyed playing classical music and continued into his university years where he set up a string band called Ebor Quartet in 2015 and played various university gigs.

The quartet grew in popularity years after he left university and Netflix aired the second series of Bridgerton.

Mr Woodcock is classically trained but the increasingly popular genre of turning pop songs into classical music is where his passion flourished into a career.

“Pop music was always [popular], but since Bridgerton became so popular it has opened up this style of music to a much wider audience,” he said.

“It has definitely made a significant impact on us as a quartet. A lot of the time I was finding before that more awareness of the music that we were playing but also the music that they were wanting to be played.

“For example a lot of people used to just say we just want popular songs or we just want classical songs, we don’t mind what you play.

“Whereas now we are finding that people are specifically [requesting] Bridgerton-style songs, can you play Yellow by Coldplay because it was in season three, or Thank You Next because that was in season two.

“It’s really widened the understanding of what we do, we’ve definitely grown in enquiries and bookings which has been really good.”

The increasing demand of the quartet to play at various events including weddings and candlelight concerts organised by Ignite Concerts means that what was once their side gigs is now becoming a full time career for many of the musicians who already have full time jobs.

“We’ve got about 70 [bookings] this year,” Mr Woodcock said.

“Three out of the four quartet [musicians] have full time jobs on the side of this. But actually it’s becoming less of a side thing.

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“We [get requests] for various weddings to candlelight concerts which we are doing a lot more of recently and people who run these concerts are called Ignite Concerts.

“We’ve had a Bridgerton cruise a couple of weeks ago and now we’ve got a Bridgerton by Candlelight [event] in two weeks and we’ve got more planned in the future.”

Among the bookings and requests they receive, they are seeing a significant increase in young people enjoying this genre of music. But also a surge of interest comes from older generations too.

“We are getting younger couples [getting married] requesting us for weddings,” Mr Woodcock said.

“They will specify ‘we’ve seen Bridgerton, we love it, we love the string quartet, can you replicate that?’ It is generally a good 80% to 90% of what we do.

“If Bridgerton didn’t become that popular, we would naturally book more gigs, but [not with] weddings, which is what we do. They definitely wouldn’t be as popular.

“A lot of the wedding venues that we play at are perfect for the Bridgerton-style [performances], they fit so well.”

The reaction from the audience has been very positive, said Mr Woodcock.

“They are always super grateful, tell us how good we are and how much we sound like we’re from Bridgerton,” he said.

“We do get quite a lot of questions from people and requests about Bridgerton. We get a lot of people standing.

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“We get a lot of requests from the older generation as well, they’ve seen Bridgerton and we’ve had a lot of people coming up and requesting classical music in Bridgerton not just popular music in a classical style.

“We [tour] Yorkshire more than other places, they’re friendly people, we get a lot of good feedback and everybody is very engaging. Wherever we go in the country people love it.”

Mr Woodcock said that he feels optimistic about the quartet’s future.

“We have travelled quite far; the furthest we’ve been was down near London, it was at a restaurant that wanted us to play Bridgerton-style music,” he said.

“We do a lot of events, parties, funerals, we’ve done a few funerals recently. If we continue the way we are, we could [be on our way] to becoming nationally known.

“Just as an example on three different occasions this year we’ve got three different gigs on the same day in different areas around East Yorkshire and North Yorkshire.

“We are all classically trained but we are developed now into contemporary, popular music that we [perform].

“My favourites that we do are Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics, then Fly Me To The Moon by Frank Sinatra and Shut Up and Dance [by Walk The Moon], Sweet Child of Mine by Guns and Roses and we really enjoy playing Yellow by Coldplay.”