S.E.M. ENSEMBLE - BIOGRAPHY

S.E.M. Ensemble is one of the oldest continuously performing new music ensembles in the United States. Established in 1970, when Petr Kotík arrived from Czechoslovakia to join the Creative Associates at SUNY Buffalo, it has been performing the work of Kotík as well composers such as John Cage, Christian Wolff, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, Alvin Lucier, and many others since its inception. S.E.M. Ensemble does not have a fixed set of instruments and expands to meet the needs of any given performance or composition. In 1992, the S.E.M. chamber ensemble was expanded into The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble with a debut concert at Carnegie Hall, presenting the first complete performance of Atlas Eclipticalis by John Cage (which featured all 86 instruments). The two-hour event also included a performance by David Tudor of Cage’s Winter Music. The concert was an internationally celebrated event, lauded by audiences and critics from across the United States, Europe, and Japan. The performance at Carnegie Hall was repeated in 2012 for the Beyond Cage festival, with pianists Ursula Oppens and Joseph Kubera as soloists. S.E.M. maintains a continuous schedule of concerts in New York, touring annually in Europe. New York Times has hailed S.E.M. as an ensemble that “represents the best of what is left of the experimental tradition.”