Ensembles
BERG Orchestra is one of the leading Czech music ensembles, having for years brought a breath of fresh air to the Czech music scene. It has a specific mission of promoting new music and attracting new audiences to it. The orchestra performs not only at regular concert halls but is constantly searching for new spaces for contemporary music. It also mixes music with other arts like dance, theatre, visual arts, film etc. So far it has performed more than two hundred new works commissioned primarily with the very best young Czech
composers and given even many more Czech premieres by internationally renowned composers. BERG Orchestra has collaborated with the most important Czech organizations such as the National Theatre, DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague Spring International Music Festival, Strings of Autumn festival and many others, it has created plenty of recordings for the Czech Radio, Czech Television and for CDs. Educational projects form a regular part of its activities. Berg Orchestra was founded in 1995 on initiative of then young conductor Peter Vrabel who still remains its artistic director. Together they were commended for artistic excellence and promotion of Czech music by the Czech section of the International Music Council of UNESCO. In 2021 the orchestra won the prestigious Prix Italia prize for its original project Music for Sirens.
The UMZE Ensemble was formed in 1997, in response to an initiative by music historian András Wilheim, composer László Tihanyi and Zoltán Rácz, Artistic Director of the Amadinda Percussion Group. In the last 25 years the UMZE Ensemble has become a defining feature of musical life in Hungary, and alongside regular appearances at home, it has accepted important invitations to perform abroad, for instance in Berlin, Karlsruhe, Avignon, Zagreb,
New York’ Carnegie Hall, at the Wiener Festwochen, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival and at one of the most important forums for new music, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.
Since 2005 the ensemble has been supported by the UMZE (New Hungarian Music Association), which aims to act as the spiritual heir to the New Hungarian Music Society originally founded in 1911 by Bartók and Kodály. Hungarian musicians of the highest calibre were involved in forming the Association, including György Ligeti, György Kurtág, Péter Eötvös, Ferenc Rados, Miklós Perényi, and Zoltán Jeney.
The current Artistic Director of the Ensemble is Gergely Vajda, and the President of the Association is Balázs Horváth.
Hashtag Ensemble is a music cooperative specializing in contemporary music, improvisation and musical education, established by flutist Ania Karpowicz in 2013.
Hashtag Ensemble operates by creating egalitarian structures based on multi-layered activities of its members and by buliding programmes based on legible and usually non-musical contexts. An important element of the group’s concert practice is support and presentation of artistic achievements of women – since it’s beginning the group has cooperated with multiple female Composers and Artists.
Intervention operations, concerts in the backyards of Warsaw townhouses (as part of the Warszemuzik festival) or on the street (e.g. Workers Union by L. Andriessen performed with Warsaw residents at Na Rozdrożu Square) are the foundation of Hashtag Ensemble rooting in locality and integration with small communities.
The group has been invited by European festivals and institutions, such as Warsaw Autumn, Sacrum Profanum, Intersonanzen, Sinfonia Varsovia, POLIN Music Festival, Tallin Afekt Festival, Poznań Music Spring, Musica Electronica Nova, Music Gardens, Warsaw Music Encounters and other.
Hashtag Ensemble performs finalists’ compositions at composers’ competitions: The Tadeusz Baird Young Composers Competition, Zygmunt Mycielski Composition Competition, Kazimierz Serocki International Composers’ Competition.
One of important areas of the group’s activity is improvisation, which has produced three improvisational threads so far. „Visegrad Songs” (CD 2016) is a reinterpretation of motives taken from 19th century classical music, “#WITKACY” (CD 2018) presents a musical re-reading of photographic autportraits by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, performed during the SOUNDLAB project in the M. Karłowicz Philharmony in Szczecin (among other performances), and the newest thread „urb<s>core”, consists of closed improvisational forms inspired by photographic scores by Zbyszek Siemaszko, revolving aroung the theme of Warsaw’s modernist architecture. „urb<s>core” concert has been recorded for TVP Kulturawithin the Scena Klasyczna (Classic Scene) programme and the album will premiere in 2019. The “urb <s> core” has been developed into the “archi-solos” audiovisual project for the Sacrum Profanum 2020 festival.
Hashtag Ensemble has produced two repertoir albums: #NetworkMusic (CD 2018), which traces the group’s artistic explorations and development in years 2013-2017, and „Trash Music” (CD 2018), which presents a study on the works of Wojciech Błażejczyk, “Openings of the (eye)” (CD 2020) – the world’s first phonographic monograph by the composer Lucia Dlugoszewski and “First Command” (CD 2019) – an electroacoustic suite by Adam Porębski to the prose of Joseph Conrad. Hashtag Ensemble albums have been have been published with Bołt Records, DUX Recording Procuders and Requiem Records Opus Series.
Hashtag Ensemble is engaged in musical education, since 2016 it has been performing educational concerts of contemporary music at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, within the Smykowizje project. Only in 2017 the group has played 34 concerts for more than 1000 families, presenting the works of Crumb, Andriessen, Schoenberg, Penderecki and many young Polish composers. Hashtag Ensemble also organises workshops for composers (e.g. in cooperation with CEME festival, Israel 2020) and performers (e.g. during Afekt festival, Estonia 2018).
Hashtag Ensemble initiates and moderates cooperations with new music ensembles in Poland and Europe (Riot Ensemble, Meitar Ensemble, NeoQuartet, Spółdzielnia Muzyczna Contemporary Ensemble) and supports partnership builiding within the contemporary music environments – both musical and institutional.
EnsembleSpectrum is a chamber ensemble specialising in music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Over the years, its desire to present less well-known and entirely new works, whose mastery often represents both a mental and technical challenge, gradually became a passion and life mission, motivating the ensemble to always pursue a more daring and momentous dramaturgy stepping beyond the boundaries of music. The ensemble’s musicians studied at art universities across Europe (the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Graz, Mozarteum University Salzburg, Det Kongelige Danske
Musikkonservatoriuma, the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno, Universität der Künste Berlin, and others), which has allowed them to enrich their performance with diverse approaches to the musical material. The ensemble’s members are active as professionals in various orchestras both in Slovakia and abroad, as well as in various educational institutions.
Since the group’s establishment in 2012 and first concert on 21st February 2013, EnsembleSpectrum has performed over a hundred works of both Slovak and international composers, presenting over fifty world premieres. The ensemble regularly initiates the creation of new works, particularly through New Dawn, a project aimed at the young generation. EnsembleSpectrum performed at important festivals dedicated to Slovak music (Melos-Ethos, New Slovak Music) that occupy an important position in the cultural history of the country, thanks to which they could contribute to the improvement of social and cultural values in Slovakia. However, the ensemble also appreciate the opportunity to present Slovak music at younger festivals (Galéria hudby, Konfrontácie, Hudba u Fullu), events abroad (Fête de la Musique, Germany; MusicOlomouc, Czech Republic), and at their own dedicated concerts (New Dawn On the Road, Rezonancia farieb, Avantgarda ’60, etc., or the unique nine-hour Sleepover marathon at Nová Cvernovka).
Their programming can be divided into three creative directions: works by young composers; Slovak music after 1945; international music after 1945. This concept standing behind their repertoire allows them to focus on a particular issue or theme and present it to their audiences. The list of works performed by the ensemble includes composers associated with French spectralism (G. Grisey, T. Murail, F. Romitelli), the Slovak musical avant-garde (J. Sixta, I. Hrušovský, I. Parík, V. Bokes, M. Adamčiak, and others), American experimentalism (J. Tenney, J. Cage, J. Eastman, A. Lucier, P. Niblock), European post-modernism (C. Bauckholt, A. Schnittke, S. Sciarrino, M. Kagel, H. Abrahamsen), and the work of young Slovak (P. Javorka, A. Paluchová, L. Novosedlíková, M. Tóth, T. Hvozdíková, S. Hvozdík, etc.) and international (S. Bušs, H. Arias, A. Arkushyna, S. Kim, P. Siek) composers.
In 2018, SpectrumEnsemble released their debut album, New Dawn, with the Real Music House label. Their 2021 release on the Music Fund label, Avant-garde of the ’60s, is dedicated to the crucial chamber works of 1960s Slovak music. That same year, they established a new branch of their activities, UBU Collection (utopická brána umenia – Utopian Gate of Art), which allows them to contribute to the dissemination of contemporary art through music publishing. The first album on this label was by František Výrostko and BraCk Players: Doublebassement (2021, UBU #01), which was followed by an addition to the New Dawn series: New Dawn Vol. 2 – La femme armée (2021, UBU #02), nominated for the Radio_Head Award in the classical music category. Since then, the label has released the debut profile album of Slovak composer Matej Sloboda – Doctor ONE & Mistress PULSE (2022, UBU #03) – and a piano trio album by the Proxima Piano Trio, Current Vibes (2022, UBU #04).
