contemporary music – text – art – performance – installation
In autumn 2014, 10 active members of the “Cooperativa Neue Musik e.V.” decided to found Bielefeld’s first ensemble for new music. With a background of its then 25-year commitment to contemporary music with well over 100 concerts, monthly jour fixe events, interdisciplinary projects, Long Nights of New Music, DIAGONALE festivals and the major project “bielefelder swarms”, the association has been mixing ever since into the cultural scene with this unique ensemble.
The ensemble has an unusual variety of potential in the musical spectrum of its members. Classical singing by soprano and mezzo-soprano and classical instruments with piano, clarinet and cello are supplemented by saxophone, guitar, percussion and drums. There is also a lyricist and three sound artists who work very differently: kinetic sound art, circuit bending, found sounds and field recordings are some of the approaches represented here, alongside the analog synthesizer.
In the new music of this ensemble, classical competencies such as song and chamber music meet those of free improvisation and jazz, as well as electronics, acoustic art, sound installations, language art, performance, the musical staging of architecture, city and landscape, musical LandArt and social sculpture. All these competencies are brought into the work and projects of the ensemble.
Several members of the ensemble also work as composers and can draw from this diverse pool.
At the same time, the ensemble offers the opportunity to develop programs in smaller formations in which compositions and concepts from the broad spectrum of international contemporary composers are interpreted.
After two professional reorientations, the ensemble currently has 9 members, new interested parties are already taking part in meetings.
The ensemble gave its first concert on October 21, 2015 with the program “Ins Offene”. Since then, various programs have been developed and works written for the ensemble.
A particular focus of the Cooperativa Ensemble is the art of free improvisation. It is practiced on all possible occasions in order to bring the very different means and backgrounds of those involved into contact and debate again and again in a musical way.
Another strength of the ensemble lies in the experimental development of new formats of musical intervention in the social life of our time.
This also includes “mixed programs” for which the ensemble has the best possible prerequisites. Concert programs in which, for example, Beethoven sonatas alternate with free improvisation or emerge from one another, in which mutated electronic toys meet poetry or contemporary songs appear in fragment recordings.
In this way, the ensemble is able to perform in completely different cultural and social contexts, in order to bring in the familiar and the foreign. A contribution to understanding and tolerance.