They are four: Roxana and Yaoré on violins, Suzanne on cello and Louise on harpsichord. Behind the Celtic myth of the “banshee”, they reinvent the concert experience with a freedom shaped as much by Baroque aesthetics as by the spirit of an Irish pub. Their album, to be released in September on Alpha Classics, will explore Venetian and Viennese repertoire. 
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Brought together in a trio sonata formation, The BanXhies have been exploring the Baroque repertoire dear to them since their founding in 2022. Performing both in France (the Ambronay Festival, the Moments musicaux de Gerberoy…) and abroad, they have been supported since 2024 by the European EEEmerging+ programme and the Fondation Singer-Polignac. Positioned at the opposite end of the spectrum from the traditional concert format, they free themselves from its constraints through programmes rich in transcriptions and improvisations. Their first album, 47° Nord, will be released in September 2026 on Alpha Classics.
Is it intentional that The BanXhies is 100% female?
Louise Acabo: The fact that our ensemble is entirely female is pure coincidence. You could say it was intuitive, simply because it happened naturally. The question never really arose, and our aim was not to create a women-only ensemble.
You did, however, choose a particularly female figure, the banshee, for your ensemble’s name…
Louise: What we wanted was to find a mythological name for the ensemble while “de-Baroquifying” it. We didn’t want to call ourselves “The Enchanted Brook” or “The Fickle Fairies”! (laughs)
Roxana Rastegar: What interests us is that in Irish mythology, the banshee is neither a benevolent nor a malevolent figure. There is nothing binary about her… She is complex and difficult to categorize. Above all, she is a messenger figure, linking the worlds of the living and the dead. And music, precisely, can be seen as a form of message: it conveys so many things that are not easy to express in words!
Why choose this spelling: BanXhies?
Roxana: There are several ways of spelling the word. The best known is “banshees,” as in the legendary rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees. To set ourselves apart, we had chosen the spelling “banshies.” But last September, our Instagram account was suspended following a report for intellectual property infringement…
Suzanne Wolff: At that time, we had just created our Instagram page and all our contracts bore the name “Banshies” …
Louise: So we lost two years’ worth of content, which we were never able to recover! For a young ensemble, that is tough, because many labels and presenters look at that content… Fortunately, the EEEmerging+ team helped us greatly in registering the new brand “The BanXhies.”
Roxana: … as for the X, it is actually a cross striking through the “s” in our logo. (laughs)
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