Ensemble Omega am ZKM

Guest performance under direction of Bernd Asmus

True to its objective of concentrating on new music (and, in particular, very new music) in the music industry the performance given by the Ensemble Omega from Karlsruhe in the Blue Cube at the ZKM on 6 November will feature two premieres and an ambitious multimedia project.

One of the two new pieces by John Palmer, a composer from Stuttgart, is called Waka and was written especially for the ensemble. surfaces, a piece for six instrumentalists, tape and video by Ludger Brümmer, Head of the ZKM⎥Institute for Music and Acoustics, is being performed for the first time in Karlsruhe. Rounding off the programme are solo and duo compositions by Bernd Asmus, Harrison Birtwistle and Andreas Fervers. The conductor is Alejo Pérez Pouillieux. Reviewing the performances given to date by the Ensemble Omega, which was founded in the spring of 2000 and is made up of graduates of the Karlsruhe College of Music, critics have acknowledged that »the programmes are both varied and dramaturgically compelling« with »moments of the utmost intensity«. The ensemble attaches great importance to new and alternative modes of presentation.

In the summer of 2001, musicians from the Ensemble Omega were involved in the multimedia project, urban.dis.urban, a concert theatre installation produced jointly by the Munich Festival A.Devantgarde and the ZKM Karlsruhe (performances at Munich’s Neues Theater and the ZKM). A string trio, a wind trio, piano, drums and guitar form the nucleus of the ensemble, which is conducted by Bernd Asmus.