[silence] An upcoming S.E.M. Ensemble concert

[S.E.M. Ensemble]

Please join us for the S.E.M Ensemble Concert at Paula Cooper Gallery next
Thursday at 8pm.
Also, on Monday, Dec. 17th at 8pm, a preview of the program at Willow Place
Auditorium, 26 Willow Place, in Brooklyn Heights.
 
Paula Cooper Gallery 534 West 21 Street, New York:
Thursday, December 20 at 8pm
 

S.E.M. Ensemble
Petr Kotik, Director
Gayla Morgan, Soprano
Steven Fox, Tenor, Narration
 
Petr Kotik  Spheres & Attraction (Text by R. Buckminister Fuller) 2005
J.S.Bach  Recitativo & Aria (³Er hat uns allen wohl getan²) 1729
Petr Kotik  String Quartet (premiere) 2007
Alex Mincek  Nucleus II (premiere) 2007
Galina Ustwolskaja  Symphony No. 5 ³Amen² 1990

 
 
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 have
also often performed with the group.   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 David Tudor at the piano. Since
then, the SEM Orchestra has toured Europe five times and performed in Japan.
SEM holds yearly concerts in New York at the Paula Cooper Gallery and other
venues such as Merkin Concert Hall, Lincoln Center, and Zankel Hall at
Carnegie Hall.
 
Since 1976, S.E.M. Ensemble has performed concerts at Paula Cooper Gallery.
Guests, who performed with SEM at Paula Cooper included John Cage, Pauline
Oliveros, La Monte Young, David Tudor, Maryanne Amacher, Jackson Mac Low,
Alvin Lucier, Christian Wolff, to name just a few.
 
The Czech born composer, conductor and flutist Petr Kotik has resided in the
United States since 1969.  In 1970 he founded the S.E.M. Ensemble, which
expanded into The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble In 1992. Kotik has
received numerous composition grants and commissions including from the
National Endowment for the Arts, and the prestigious composition award from
the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts. In 2003 Kotik was a
Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) resident in Berlin. His recent
compositions include Variations for 3 Orchestras, premiered at MaerzMusik
Festival in Berlin and at the Plains at Gordium, and For 6 Percussionists,
premiered at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York. Spheres & Attraction is
for two voices, string quartet and percussion, and uses a text by R.
Buckminster Fuller, an excerpt from his 1980 commencement speech at the
School of Architecture and Environmental Studies of the State University of
New York at Buffalo.
 
Alex Mincek is a New York-based composer and performer. His music is often
characterized by elements of noise and dynamic thresholds and explores
varying ways in which repetition affects our sense of time, memory and
perception of difference. Mincek¹s music has been programmed by festivals
such as the Royaumont Voix Nouvelles and Musiques Demesurees festivals in
France, the Darmstadt and Magdeburg music festivals in Germany, the Ostrava
Days festivals (2001, 2003, 2005) in the Czech Republic and the World Music
Institute¹s Interpretations series in New York City. As composer and
performer, Mincek has collaborated with groups including the Ensemble Cairn,
The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble, the Janacek Philharmonic, the Second
Instrumental Unit, Red Light, TACTUS, the Vega String Quartet and the
Scarborough Trio. Mincek¹s music has also been recognized through
commissions and grants from the New Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra Leipzig,
Ensemble XXI (France), MATA, Meet The Composer, the National Foundation for
Advancement in the Arts, Due East and Present Music. He currently composes
for and serves as the saxophonist, bass clarinetist and music director of
the Wet Ink Ensemble, a group dedicated to experimental contemporary music,
which he founded in 1998. Nucleus II, for flute, tenor saxophone, tuba and
drum set, is an expansion and continuation of an earlier work, Nucleus, for
saxophone and drum set. Like the piece it is based on, Nucleus II, uses
various types of repetitive structures as a schizophrenic basis to explore
and link dialectics between difference/repetition, banality/novelty,
reduction/proliferation, and freedom/confinement.
 

The St. Petersburg based Russian composer Galina Ustwolskaya (1919-2006)
was, until Gorbachev¹s perestroika in the late 1980s, an entirely neglected
and unknown composer except to a few close associates and friends.
Ustwolskaya made herself noticed in the 1930s when, as a student of Dimitri
Shostakovich, she refused to conform to the official sponsored esthetics.
The works are characterized by their unique sound and driven by her artistic
courage and unconcealed religious beliefs.  For that, performances of her
compositions were often banned. Symphony No. 5 ³Amen² has a unique
instrumentation: oboe, trumpet, tuba and percussion plus a narrator reading
the Lord¹s Prayer. Like many other pieces, Ustwolskaya¹s Symphony No. 5 is
distinguished by imposing and expansive gestures.

 
 
Gayla Morgan, soprano, began her music career as a classical violinist and
later pursued western/folk singing and fiddling as well as musical theater
(Dreamhouse. Justine¹s Red; Regional: Grapes of Wrath, among them). She has
premiered contemporary art songs (Eleanor Cory, Mark Grant and Ilse Gilbert)
and appeared on the Sound of New Music Series at St. Marks-in-the-Bowery.
She has also soloed with NY Virtuoso Singers, Amor Artis, and the Hunter
College Choir; and was one of the six members of The Western Wind Vocal
Ensemble for five years.
 
A graduate of London¹s Royal Academy of Music, tenor Steven Fox performs
with Pomerium, New York Virtuoso Singers, AmorArtis and the choirs of St.
Thomas Church, Trinity Church, Wall Street and St. Ignatius Loyola.  Fox is
also the conductor and founder of Musica Antiqua St. Petersburg, Russia¹s
first period-instrument orchestra, and is the newly appointed Artistic
Director of Clarion Music Society in New York. With Musica Antiqua St.
Petersburg, he has revived the works of many of Russia¹s finest 18th-century
composers, such as Dmitri Bortniansky, Maxim Berezvosky, and Evstigney
Fomin, and performed them worldwide.
 
For reservations and ticket information please call: 718-488-7659
 
For more information on the S.E.M. Ensemble visit: www.semEnsemble.org
 
 
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This Concert is possible thanks to support from the Paula Cooper Gallery,
New York State Council on the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Mary
Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, National Endowment for the Arts, The Amphion
Foundation, Phaedrus Foundation and individual contributions. Special thanks
to the Brooklyn Borough President, Marty Markowitz, for his support.
 
To unsubscribe, please email pksem@semensemble.org
 
 
 

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