[silence] S.E.M. Ensemble at the Spiegeltent, Monday, Sept. 25

[PK SEM]

For Immediate Release
September 18, 2006 
Contact: Donel Young
732-295-2406 
S.E.M. ENSEMBLE
PRESENTS MAJOR WORKS OF NEW MUSIC
AT THE SPIEGELTENT, SOUTH STREET SEAPORT, NEW YORK
CAGE, STOCKHAUSEN, KOTIK, XENAKIS AND RAIKHEL


WHEN:    Monday, September 25, 9 pm
        
WHERE:    Spiegeltent, Fulton Fish Market, Pier 17, South Street Seaport

PERFORMERS:    
The S.E.M. Ensemble
Petr Kotik, Conductor
Joseph Kubera, Piano
Conrad Harris, Violin

PROGRAM:          
Petr Kotik   Wilsie Bridge (1987/2006)
Iannis Xenakis   Dikhthas (1979)
Iannis Xenakis   Mikka (1971) and Mikka ³S² (1976)
A. Vincent Raikhel   go to, go by (2005)
Karlheinz Stockhausen   Zeitmaße (1955-56)
John Cage   Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957-58)

TICKETS for Spiegeltent:
$10, call Ticket Central at 212-279-4200
For information and reservations call 718-488-7659, info@semensemble.org
For information about Spiegeltent contact Bea Kelleher at RV Entertainment:
646-280-8151

PREVIEW CONCERT: 
Thursday, September 21, 8 pm
Willow Place Auditorium, 26 Willow Place, Brooklyn Heights

Designed in Belgium in the 1930s, the Spiegeltent was used as a traveling
entertainment venue for most of the 20th century. There are only five of
these portable wooden tents in existence today. In July 2006, it has been
brought for the first time to the United States, thanks to Ross Mollison
Productions (Australia) and Vallejo Gantner, artistic director of
Performance Space 122.

The Spiegeltent is erected at the South Street Seaport and will be
dismantled at the beginning of October. Along with a wide range of popular
and burlesque programs, the producers also scheduled a series of new music
concerts called ³Darmstadt: Classics of Avant Garde,² curated by Zach
Layton, director and producer of a monthly series at Brooklyn¹s Williamsburg
venue Galapagos. The S.E.M. Ensemble concert is the 6th and final
³Darmstadt² event at Spiegeltent, a series that included performances by the
International Contemporary Ensemble and David Linton¹s Unity Gain, among
others. 

ABOUT THE PROGRAM:
This program explores the issue of multi-layered composition. The concept of
having individual parts proceed independently was fermenting on both
continents in the 1950s (Feldman, for example, was already writing
uncoordinated scores in the early years of the decade). SEM is turning its
attention to this part of history, presenting it in the context of more
recent works.

Zeitmaße (1955-56) was composed while Stockhausen was working on another one
of his major works, Gruppen for 3 Orchestras (1955-57). Both pieces share
the idea of simultaneities in various tempi and meter. In Zeitmaße this
occurs within the confines of a woodwind quintet (Stockhausen¹s quintet
employs the English horn instead of the French horn).

In Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957-58), John Cage (1912-1992) explores
similar issues to those used by Stockhausen, but approaches them in a
different way. In addition to writing individual orchestra parts and the
solo part separately, not coordinated in any way (there is no general score
for this piece), Cage allows the number of musicians to change for each
performance. The piece, commissioned by Elaine de Kooning, was composed for
Cage¹s 25-year retrospective concert at Town Hall in 1958, and the solo part
was written especially for David Tudor.

Petr Kotik has collaborated with both composers. He met Stockhausen in 1965
in Cologne, a meeting that resulted in a commission from Stockhausen to
create and realize the electronic music composition Contrabandt (1967) at
the W.D.R. Studio. In the summer of 1967, Kotik also assisted Stockhausen
with the performance of Mixtur in Darmstadt. Kotik¹s history with Cage¹s
Concert for Piano and Orchestra began in 1964 when he performed the piece in
Prague and Warsaw under Cage, with Tudor at the piano (SEM under Kotik
released the work on Wergo label: WER 6216-2). Since 1964, Kotik has
performed Concert for Piano and Orchestra many times, mostly as a conductor,
but on occasion as a flutist as well. As a performer, he continuously
collaborated with Cage from 1964 until the composer¹s death in 1992, making
Kotik Cage¹s longest collaborator alive today.

Composed between July 1986 and January 1987, Wilsie Bridge is Kotik¹s first
departure from the method he had been using since 1971, which was based on
continuously evolving melodic material. In writing the piece, Kotik was
inspired by the sight of a large field that was lit by fireflies. His
response was to treat each attack of the instruments as a light that flashes
on and off unpredictably. This idea was applied to flutes, trumpets and
synthesizers. The percussion component was added later. Two percussion
sections are scored over the instrumental part, altering the character of
the material. 

Wilsie Bridge was commissioned by W.D.R. Cologne to be presented in February
1987 at the 24-hour marathon of concerts and broadcasts honoring John Cage¹s
75th birthday. The initial 1987 composition employs eight percussionists.
For the Spiegeltent concert, Kotik has created a version with three
percussionists only.

Mikka (1971) and Mikka ³S² (1976), dedicated to Mica Salabert, were Xenakis¹
first works for solo violin. The pieces can be played separately or as a
single work. Here, Xenakis explores the use of glissandos. The pieces were
commissioned and written for Xenakis¹ publisher Mme. Francis Salabert.

Dikhthas (1979) for Violin and Piano was composed in 1979 for the Beethoven
Festival in Bonn, Germany. The title refers to a dialogue between the two
instruments. Xenakis himself compares the piano to an elephant and the
violin to a spider web. The vigorous polyphonic writing and virtuosic
demands made of both performers (who are treated as equal partners) makes
Dikhthas one of Xenakis¹ major compositions of the late 1970s.

On go to, go by (2005): ³From day to day I have a similar routine and I
often repeat myself. But every moment is different from any other and every
event is remembered differently by each person.  This balance between
repetition and continual change is a primary issue of interest for me in my
music. The instrumentation was chosen in order to restrict the register of
the piece, while still maintaining a wide spectrum of timbres.²

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Karlheinz Stockhausen (b. 1928) attended Summer Courses in Darmstadt in 1951
and studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Olivier Messiaen. In 1958,
Stockhausen met Cage, which also had a noticeable impact on his work. During
the 1960s Stockhausen became active in the Fluxus art/performance movement,
as well as creating his own ³Stockhausen Group,² which would perform
primarily on electronic devices in response to diagrams or text pieces
rather than conventional scores. Stockhausen was appointed Professor of
Composition at the Musik Hochschule in Cologne in 1971. Since 1977 the
majority of Stockhausen¹s output has been in connection with his massive
opera-cycle Licht, consisting of a performance for each of the 7 days in the
week. His first 36 scores were published by Universal Edition and, since the
establishment of his own foundation, Stockhausen-Verlag, in 1975, all his
later works have been self-published.

Petr Kotik (b. 1942) has lived in the United States since 1969. Composer,
conductor, and flutist, Kotik is the founder and Director of S.E.M. Ensemble
and The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble. Kotik has received composition
grants and commissions from numerous organizations, including the National
Endowment for the Arts and the West German Radio in Cologne. In 1998 he was
given the prestigious composition award from the Foundation for Contemporary
Performance Arts. In 2003 Kotik was a resident composer in Berlin under the
sponsorship of Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). His most
recent major composition, the 40-minute Variations for 3 Orchestras
(requiring 86 musicians) was premiered at MaerzMusik 2004 Festival in Berlin
and at the Ostrava Days 2005 festival in the Czech Republic by the Janacek
Philharmonic.

The Greek composer Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) studied engineering at the
Athens Polytechnic. He moved to Paris in 1947 and worked for the
architectural team of Le Corbusier. The two collaborated on the design of
the Philips pavilion for the Brussels Exposition of 1958. Xenakis often
based his compositions, especially his early pieces, on the designs he
created for his architectural projects. In his compositional method, Xenakis
used different mathematical principles to generate mass musical textures,
including Gaussian Distribution, the Markov chain, game theory, and
probability theory.

A. Vincent Raikhel (b. 1984) studies presently with Nils Vigeland and Reiko
Fueting at Manhattan School of Music. Raikhel was a participant at Ostrava
Days 2005, where he worked with Petr Kotik, Alvin Lucier, Louis Andriessen,
Christian Wolff and Rebecca Saunders. He participated in Master Classes with
Pierre Boulez when Boulez visited Manhattan School of Music.

The S.E.M. Ensemble is dedicated to the performance and advancement of new
music, with a focus on works that can best be described as post-Cagean.
Since its inception in 1970, SEM has collaborated with composers who also
often perform with the group. They have included, among others, Earle Brown,
Cage, Lucier, Feldman, Pauline Oliveros, Roscoe Mitchell, and a score of
other younger composers. In 1992, the ensemble expanded into The Orchestra
of the S.E.M. Ensemble with a debut concert in Carnegie Hall, ³Tribute to
John Cage,² premiering the complete Atlas Eclipticalis with an 86-piece
orchestra, Kotik conducting, and Tudor at the piano. Since then, the SEM
Orchestra has toured Europe five times and performed in Japan. SEM holds a
yearly series of concerts in New York at the Paula Cooper Gallery and other
venues such as Merkin Concert Hall, Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center,
Carnegie Hall, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, Tonic and the World Financial
Center. 

For more information on:
S.E.M. Ensemble: www.semEnsemble.org
Spiegeltent: www.spiegelworld.com/popups/darmstadt.html


This performance is supported by the New York State Music Fund, the New York
State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs,
Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the
Phaedrus Foundation, and private donations. Special thanks to the Brooklyn
Borough President, Marty Markowitz, for his support.


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