SPÓŁDZIELNIA MUZYCZNA CONTEM-
PORARY ENSEMBLE
In 2014, a group of Cracow-based musicians who performed together during the European Workshop for Contemporary Music took part in the Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, in the programme for young ensembles. They decided to continue their inspiring collaboration as a regular ensemble. The premise was to explore contemporary music of all genres, periods, and musical cultures, as well as to perform music to make us and our audiences grow and develop.
We wish to reinterpret music that is already discovered and established, as well as to discover that still waiting to be disclosed and contribute to new, topical music. We play chamber music in the broadest sense of the term, from solo compositions to sinfonietta-style apparatus. Adopting equal partnership as a guiding principle, we aim our efforts at blending different personalities into a new whole: that is why we call ourselves Spółdzielnia Muzyczna (Music Cooperative).
The Cooperative is a team of artistic personalities. Each musician also has individual activities, with outstanding achievements in musical art: concertising as soloists, participating in chamber ensembles, and playing in symphony orchestras. Those activities are not restricted to performance: they also include research, composition, production, and musical life animation. In this way, each of the ensemble’s members gathers priceless individual experiences linked to many facets of contemporary, classical, ancient, popular, and ethnic music. From this versatility comes our openness to innovative ideas and musical solutions. Our primary motivation in selecting repertoire is individuality, diversity, and freshness, and in performance, the understanding of musical and aesthetic ideas as well as openness and musicianship backed by technical prowess. We strive to encourage the composition of new works.
As members of the European Workshop for Contemporary Music, we have had the privilege to work with instrumentalists from groups like Ensemble Moderne and Ensemble Garage. We also owe a lot to EWCM’s chief conductor Rüdiger Bohn. Over the course of our independent activity, by now spanning over a year, three musicians from the ensemble: Barbara Borowicz, Gabriela Biel and Bartosz Sałdan, worked with Helmut Lachenmann on interpreting his Trio fluido. Another performance of that work took place at the Brand New Music Festival in Katowice. We also participated in Cracow’s aXes New Music Triduum festival, Musica Moderna in Łódź, Warsaw Autumn, Sacrum Profanum, and Audio Art Festivals.
At 2016 Warsaw Autumn, we gave the Polish premiere of the stage version of Salvatore Sciarrino’s opera Luci mie traditrici in a coproduction with the Warsaw Chamber Opera. We have then given a full-length concert at the 2017 Warsaw Autumn, notably giving the first performance of a work by Jacek Sotomski. 2018 will be third consecutive year of our international project, from the boundary of composed and entertainment music, that we present on the invitation of the Sacrum Profanum festival. In 2017, we have contributed to the premiere of Piotr Tabakiernik’s Monachomachia, a show awarded the Gazeta Wyborcza Strzała award in Lublin in the category Cultural Event. We have also recorded Jagoda Szmytka’s electrified memories of bloody cherries for a PWM Edition album dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Poland’s regained independence.