S.E.M. + Roscoe Mitchell @Bohemian National Hall
Date: April 21, 2023
Time: 7:00 pm
Czech Center New York presents a concert: Art of Music and Ideas: CZECH-AMERICAN-CZECH by Ostravská banda & S.E.M. Ensemble. Featuring Roscoe Mitchell.
Friday, April 21 · 7pm
Bohemian National Hall
321 East 73rd Street
New York, NY 10021
Czech Center New York presents a concert: Art of Music and Ideas: CZECH-AMERICAN-CZECH by Ostravská banda & S.E.M. Ensemble, conducted by Jiří Rožeň & Petr Kotík. The concert is part of the New York Tour of Ostravská banda.
In the early 1960s, a group of Czech composers (of classical music) was influenced by ideas and music that came from New York. Although later, the American influence in new music spread gradually throughout Europe, Prague was the first place where it had an important impact. This concert of music by the Czech and American composers (going back more than sixty years) will demonstrate the proximity of ideas between Czech and American avant-garde music. When John Cage visited Prague in 1964 and listened to music by Rudolf Komorous and Petr Kotik, he told them:
“What you are doing in Prague is extraordinary, I have never encountered anything like it”.
Ostravská banda is one of the foremost European chamber orchestras; based in Ostrava, it consists of musicians from Europe and the U.S. It was founded in 2005 by Petr Kotík as one of the resident orchestras at the festival Ostrava Days.
Produced by the Ostrava Center for New Music, the Ostravská banda New York tour, in collaboration with the local S.E.M. Ensemble, will include an April 19th performance at the Willow Place Auditorium in Brooklyn Heights and an April 20th performance at the Buchwald Theater of the newly completed Leonard & Claire Tow Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College.
Ostravská Banda’s New York tour will take place thanks to the support of the National Recovery Plan of the EU and the Statutory City of Ostrava and in cooperation with the New York-based S.E.M. Ensemble.
Art of Music and Ideas
CZECH-AMERICAN-CZECH
Ostravská banda & S.E.M. Ensemble
Jiří Rožeň & Petr Kotik, conductors