Ensemble Nikel

Ensemble Nikel is a quartet consisting of saxophone, electric guitar, percussion and piano. These instruments, mostly evolving in the 20th century were joined together to form a new chamber music output where electric and acoustic sounds are to be melted into a unified organism bridging between, not only different sources of mechanical waves, but a... lso aesthetic prejudice and dichotomies of musical genres. In its quest of exploring its audio spectral artistic possibilities, the group has been presenting an ongoing subscribers series in Tel Aviv & Haifa, Initiating conceptual projects with changing partners, soloists or ensembles and above all collaborates with composers in developing new repertoire. Among the composers who wrote for the ensemble one can find Raphaël Cendo, Chaya Czernowin, Clemens Gadenstaetter, Philippe Hurel, Eduardo Moguillansky, Marco Momi, Helmut Oehring, Stefan Prins, Jose Maria Sanchez Verdu and Michael Wertmüller to name a few. Founded in 2007 by Yaron Deutsch and Gan Lev, the ensemble became a frequent guest in honorable festivals such as Wien Modern, Donauecshinger Musiktage, Ultraschall (Berlin), Bang on a Can (New York), International Summer Course for New Music Darmstadt, ArsMusica (Brussels) Klangspuren (Schwaz) and Warsaw Autumn among others. Along side its growing repertoire and changing concert programs, the ensemble is also touring with some concretely fixed recently developed projects such as "Zohar Iver" - a concerto for Ensemble Nikel and Orchestra by composer Chaya Czernowin; "Songs & Poems" - a joint evening created and performed by Ensemble Nikel and the Frankfurt based dance group MaMaZa and a project titled "Jukebox" (premiered in Wien Modern 2013) where the ensemble explores popular contexts within pieces that are « songs ».Read More