Talea Ensemble:
Karlheinz Stockhausen – “Mikrophonie I” (1964)
SEM Ensemble:
Petr Kotik
Music for 3 (1964)
Alvin Singleton
Be Natural (1974)
Iannis Xenakis
Mikka and Mikka “S” (1971, 1976)
Conrad Harris, violin
Morton Feldman
Why Patterns? (1978)
Flute, Piano, Percussion
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Zietmasze (1955-1956)
Flute, Oboe, English Horn, Clarinet, Bassoon
John Cage
Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957-58)
Joseph Kubera (in version with two orchestras)
Festival Pass $50 for all three nights!
Festival pass includes admission for one + one free drink ticket to each night. Drink tickets will be hard copy and available at the box office when purchaser picks up ticket.
Darmstadt Institute New York: 70 Year Anniversary Celebration
After 70 years of new music from the International Summer Course for New Music at Darmstadt, Germany, New York based performers and ensembles come together to celebrate a legacy of radical innovation. Founded in 1946, the Darmstadt Summer Course emerged as one of the most critical epicenters for international contemporary music. In the 70 years since the festival’s beginnings, many of the twentieth century’s most influential composers and performers have premiered major works and engaged in fierce debates about the future of music.
Faculty and students at Darmstadt have included Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Olivier Messiaen, John Cage, Morton Feldman, György Ligeti, David Tudor, Luciano Berio, Helmut Lachenmann, and Brian Ferneyhough.
Festival highlights include the New York premiere of Matthias Spahlinger’s “Extension,” Karlheinz Stockhausen’s “Mikrophonie,” John Cage’s “Concert for Piano and Orchestra,” new works by Ashley Fure and Darmstadt faculty member Jennifer Walshe, and a rare performance of Helmut Lachenmann’s “Pression” by Arditti Quartet cellist Lucas Fels.
The Talea Ensemble has been labeled “…a crucial part the New York cultural ecosphere” by the New York Times and has given many important world and US premieres of new works by composers including Pierre Boulez, Tristan Murail, James Dillon, Pierluigi Billone, Hans Abrahamsen, Stefano Gervasoni, Marco Stroppa, and Fausto Romitelli. The Talea Ensemble has performed at the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Wien Modern, Contempuls, Spectrum XXI Festival, Nevada Encounters of New Music (NEON), La Ciudad de las Ideas (Mexico), Art Summit Indonesia (Jakarta), and the International Contemporary Music Festival of Lima, Peru. Radio broadcasts of performances have been heard on ORF (Austria), HRF (Germany), and WQXR’s Q2. As an active collaborator of new music Talea has joined forces with the Austrian Cultural Forum, Consulate General of Denmark, Korean Cultural Service NY, Italian Cultural Institute, and the Ukrainian Institute. Assuming an ongoing role in supporting and collaborating with student composers, Talea has served as ensemble in residence at Harvard University, Columbia University, Stanford University, Ithaca College, Cornell University and New York University. Talea has recorded works on the Living Artists Label, Gravina Musica, Tzadik, and a forthcoming release on New World Records. Recently commissioned composers include Anthony Cheung, Christopher Trapani, and Georges Aperghis. For more information, please visit www.taleaensemble.org
S.E.M. Ensemble was founded in 1970 when Petr Kotik organized a group of musicians of the fellows at the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, SUNY/Buffalo. The first S.E.M. Ensemble concert was presented in April of that year in Buffalo at the Domus Theater in the former showroom of the Pierce- Arrow car manufacturer. The program included works by Cornelius Cardew, John Cage, Petr Kotik and Rudolf Komorous. Under the headline, “Ensemble Audience in Retreat,” the concert review’s opening sentence read, “An audience of 17, including wives and other relatives, remained out of an original 100 attendees, at the conclusion of the newly-formed SEM Ensemble, setting some sort of local record…”
Since then, S.E.M. Ensemble has established itself as one of the distinguished ensembles for new music in the U.S., maintaining a continuous schedule of concerts in New York, touring annually in Europe and also performing in South America and Japan. New York Times has hailed SEM, “S.E.M. Ensemble represents the best of what is left of the experimental tradition.”
SEM continues to perform a yearly series of concerts at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York and at the Willow Place Auditorium, its own space in Brooklyn Heights. SEM also performs major concerts at highprofile venues such as Carnegie Hall (Stern and Zankel Halls), Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and Merkin Concert Hall.
Recent recordings, all on the Dog w/a Bone label (New York), include Morton Feldman’s For Philip Guston (4-CD set), Petr Kotik’s Many Many Women (3-CD set), Music by Marcel Duchamp (1 CD) and “Spoken Music” CD—a live performance recording with John Cage, Dick Higgins, Jackson Mac Low and others. Recent recordings of The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble are available on Asphodel Ltd. (San Francisco), Wergo (Mainz) and Dog w/a Bone (New York) labels.
