Nieuw Ensemble Amsterdam

Complemented by 3 pictures after Paul Klee by Edison Denissov – influential pioneer of Russian Modernism – and a work by the famous Armenian Tigran Mansurian, the Nieuw Ensemble from Amsterdam will present commissioned works by Petros Ovsepyan (Armenia), Jamilia Jazylbekova (Kazakhstan), Farangis Nurulla-Khoja (Tajikistan) and Artjom Kim (Uzbekistan). These composers were shaped by very different musical environments. Rooted in their home countries and traditions, most of them started their training in music and composition at the great Soviet conservatories, later to travel to the West and settle there. A master of instrumentation and lover of modernism, Edison Denisov was one of the famous “troika” (with Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina). He had a formative influence on the younger generation of composers. Towards the end of his life he emigrated to France, where he died in 1996. Berlin-based composer Petros Ovsepyan was born in Azerbaijan to an Armenian family and trained in the United States, where his teachers included Brian Ferneyhough and Klaus Huber. Jamilia Jazylbekova hails from Kazakhstan, began her studies at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, then attended the University of the Arts Bremen. Artjom Kim is a young composer from Uzbekistan. Farangis Nurulla-Khoja has Tadjik, Swedish and Canadian roots. Travelling in the United States and Europe, performing at festivals and concerts worldwide, they carry the real world music within them, expressing it openly and communicatively and often very poetically.