1990
FOunding
90
Ensemble Musikfabrik - known at that time as Musikfabrik NRW - was created through the initiative of the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Culture and the encouragement of Gerhard Stäbler, Nicolaus A. Huber, Bernhard Wambach and Johannes Kalitzke. The former Prime Minister Johannes Rau took over the patronage of the new ensemble.
Photo: Ensemble Musikfabrik
© Gudrun Webel
Debut
91
The first public appearance of Ensemble Musikfabrik was as part of the Witten Days for New Chamber Music performing the piece „Salto. Trapez. Ikarus“ by Johannes Kalitzke. In restrospect, Kalitzke said, „I like to think back on the development of the piece, because it was carried by the euphoria that accompanied the founding of the ensemble - it was stimulating to write for a group of curious and motivated soloists. With all due respect to the experienced playing techniques of today's orchestras and ensembles in general, with the ensemble you could really enjoy the energy of a new beginning as an extraordinary situation - in spite of the unavoidable growing pains.“
1991
1992
YOung
& Wild
92
Ensemble Musikfabrik presented its first musical theater production at the Witten Days for New
Chamber Music: Franz Martin Olbrisch's „Der gebrochene Spiegel“ (The Broken Mirror).
In the same year, the ensemble gave its first concert at the Donaueschinger Festival and opened the
Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music. Concerts, where the musicians „developed their own
ensemble aesthetic,“ „an unusually present, vitale, hyper-expressive, yes - analog to the aesthetics of the
'Junge Wilde' in the art world - 'wild' sound aesthetics unfolded“ (Reinhard Oehlschlägel).
MauriciO
Kagel
Kagel's relationship with the Ensemble Musikfabrik began in 1996, a friendship he
liked to refer to as heartfelt „chumminess.“ It was a relationship based on many performances together:
whether in the musty living room of the old jazz singer John Blue, or on the stage for a concert farce of
„Divertimento?“, the ensemble has literally traveled in all directions of the compass performing his „Stücke
der Windrose,“ or "Pieces of the Compass Rose."
His legacy and final work, based on the verses of Heinrich Heine's „Aus der Matratzengruft“, was first
performed by the ensemble posthumously and in his dedication.
Photo: Mauricio Kagel & Ensemble Musikfabrik at rehearsals
for „Blue‘s Blue“
© Klaus Rudolph
96
1996
(N(A(CH)T)
96
„The sight of so many details was unforgettable, such as the transformation of music stands
into music hangers (for when the musicians performed while lying on their backs), the dialogue between a
musician and a glowing hole in the ground (in reality a piece of fallen and illuminated music paper) or the
scene where a performer is beaten up, clothed in nothing but percussion instruments.“ (DIE ZEIT 10/05/96)
The premier of Friederich Schenker's stage work at the Witten Days of New Chamber Music was
unforgettable for the musicians of Ensemble Musikfabrik as well, as under the direction of Reinhild Hoffman, it was the first time that
they worked with a choreographer.
Photo: Premiere with Friedrich Schenkers at the „Wittener Tagen für neue
Kammermusik“ in 1996
1996
KarlheinZ
StOckhausen
97
Karlheinz Stockhausen was and continues to be one of the most influential composers in the history of the ensemble as well. Intense and challenging rehearsals for the premiere of the Rotary Quintet or for the CD production of MOMENTE defined the close collaboration. As a result, part of the ensemble was in constant exchange over many years with the master from Kürten.
Photos:
Karlheinz Stockhausen © Klaus Rudolph
Rehearsal for the Rotary Quintett © private
TakeOver Of the
artistiC direCtiOn
In the beginning, the ensemble's artistic development lay with the executive committee members Nicolaus A. Huber, Johannes Kalitzke, Gerhard Stäbler and Bernhard Wambach. Originally like an orchestra on a small scale - with same hierarchical structures - there was a fundamental reset after the first years of discovery and development. In 1997 the musicians took their fate into their own hands - and as a result, Ensemble Musikfabrik really took off.
97
1997
ASK LITTLE
AUTO
98
Through the production ASK LITTLE AUTO WHERE IT WANTS TO TAKE YOU with works by John Cage and
staged by Reinhild Hoffmann, a new self-understanding of the contemporary soloist became apparent.
Whether as mimes, speakers, with toy instruments or as a stage technician - the soloists of Ensemble
Musikfabrik rehearsed in an eight-week long work phase and through countless concerts their exit from
automated production processes.
Schicht-
wechsel
(Shift Change)
00
For the production of „Schichtwechsel“ by the composer of Manos Tsangaris - and on behalf of the Schauspiel Köln - Ensemble Musikfabrik confiscated the Halle Kalk theater. A dancer took on the roll of conductor, while the „music workers“ were allowed to experience one of the great music-theatrical evenings of the ensemble's first decade wearing the overalls of construction workers.
2000
2002
MOve tO
COlOgne
02
With the move from Düsseldorf to Cologne, initially in the industrial area of Maarweg in Cologne-Ehrenfeld, the ensemble finally found its home in the tradition-steeped city. The former pressing plant of EMI Electrola was Musikfabrik's first address - a provisional arrangement that lasted for several years.
Academy
Musikfabrik
02
2002 also saw the beginning of an extensive involvement with concert educational formats. Beginning with the first workshops linked to concert programs, the Academy Musikfabrik has since developed into a wide music education and hands-on program for different target and age groups.
InsideOut
In the production of "Insideout" by Sasha Waltz and Rebecca Saunders, the soloists of the Ensemble Musikfabrik were in direct contact with the audience, acting as living sculptures and a defining part of the staging. The co-production with the steirischer herbst and the Berlin Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz was a hit, and has been performed over 100 times since its premiere in Graz.
Photo: „Insideout“ on the stage „Berlin Schaubühne am Lehniner
Platz“
© Klaus Rudolph
03
2003
Musikfabrik
im WDR
03
2003 began a new chapter for Ensemble Musikfabrik with the start of its own world premiere
concert series, „Musikfabrik im WDR“ Then for the
first time, the ensemble had found a fixed place to
present its work: the large broadcasting hall of the WDR.
Here the ensemble presents new ideas and projects four times a year. This is made possible not only
thanks to the partners WDR and KölnMusik, but especially by the generous support of the „Kunststiftung NRW“,
through which over 60 premieres have been created up to this time.
Photos: Experiments with alternate forms of expression in the series of
„Musikfabrik im WDR“
© Klaus Rudolph
FOunding Of the
BOard Of Trustees
05
The board of trustees has been advising the ensemble since 2005, providing essential support
in politics and culture. Founding members were Dr. Norbert Lammert, president of the German parliament,
Louwrens Langevoort, director of the Cologne Philharmonie, Edith Müller, vice-president of the NRW
parliament, ret., Marc Jan Eumann, then deputy chairman of the SPD parliamentary group NRW und Chris
Schmidt-Hofmann, representative of the state chancellery.
The board of trustees currently addresses the concerns of the ensemble under the chairmanship of Oliver
Keymis, vice-president of the NRW Parliment.
2005
Shelter
05
Ensemble Musikfabrik performed in New York for the first time in 2005 with „Shelter“, written by Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe (Libretto: Deborah Artman, Film: Bill Morrison). At the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the ensemble offered with American Minimalism refuge, sanctuary, protection - everything that defines „Shelter“. An export of the series „Musikfabrik in WDR“, where the scenic oratorio had its premiere in the same year.
Photos: Premiere „Shelter“ in the „WDR Funkhaus“ at „Wallrafplatz“
© Klaus Rudolph
The mOve intO
Mediapark
08
In 2008, Ensemble Musikfabrik found its permanent home in Cologne Mediapark, moving from the industrial area into the heart of the city. Even though the ensemble began to settle down, its touring activities intensified. In Stockhausen's „MICHAELS REISE UM DIE ERDE“, the ensemble flew with the angel-prince Michael from Stockhausen's opera-cycle „LICHT“ through seven stations around the world. This celebrated initial collaboration with the theater group La Fura Del Baus became an important tour for the ensemble - „Stockhausen on his way into Pop Culture“ headlined the FAZ.
StudiO
Musikfabrik
09
Founded in 2006 from the State Music Council NRW, Studio Musikfabrik has been under
the direction
of Ensemble Musikfabrik since 2009 - and is therefore the only youth ensemble that has the infrastructure of
a professional working ensemble with the corresponding team associated with it. The professional musicians
are available to the young musicians as teachers, giving them expert advice and assistance. Studio
Musikfabrik has been building its international network for over 10 years, traveling to Southeast Asia and
the U.S.A., and in 2012 was the first youth ensemble to ever perform at the Darmstadt International Summer
Courses for New Music.
Video: Hans Werner Henze - GISELA!
EditiOn
Musikfabrik
10
Since 2010, Ensemble Musikfabrik has been releasing the highlights of the many world premieres from the concert series "Musikfabrik in WDR" through „Edition Musikfabrik“ from WERGO. While at first only 7 CDs were planned, we are to thank the continued support of the Arts Foundation NRW and the success of the series - the first CD was awarded the ECHO-Classic prize in 2011- for its continuation. And not only that: starting with the 8th release, Gerhard Richter's paintings have been gracing the CD booklets.
2010
KLANG (SOUND) -
THE 24 HOURS OF THE DAY
As part of the „MusikTriennale“, known today as the „ACHT BRÜCKEN Festival“, Ensemble Musikfabrik presented for the first time Karlheinz Stockhausen's final work series, KLANG THE 24 HOURS OF THE DAY, which was unfinished due to his death. With 175 performances over 2 days, the busy visitors had the unique chance to hear all 21 composed „hours of the day“ in nine different venues throughout Cologne.
10
2010
MOnday
COncerts
11
„THANK YOU once again for a fantastic concert! I'm so excited every time, and go home after
the concerts in high spirits and very inspired!“
In October 2011, Ensemble Musikfabrik sent out the first invitations for „Monday Concerts in the
Musikfabrik.“ The Montagskonzerte programs are curated by individual musicians of the ensemble, where as
artistic personalities they can show their aesthetic and intellectual preferences. The concerts are free of
charge as a token of thanks to the friends of Ensemble Musikfabrik.
2011
SUNDAY
Of LIGHT
11
For most people, SUNDAY is a day of rest. Also for Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose SONNTAG
(SUNDAY) from his opera series LICHT (LIGHT) is completely devoted to the adoration and celebration of
the creation. The theatrical world premier in the Kölner Staatenahus - the first collaboration between
Ensemble Musikfabrik and the Cologne Opera - in the
production of Carlos Padrissa of the theater collective La Fura dels Baus, became an event discussed
worldwide.
Video: Sunday of Light - Trailer
Photos: Premiere in the „Kölner Staatenhaus“
© Klaus Rudolph
COmpOser
COllider
12
In 2012, Ensemble Musikfabrik established the young-talent program Composer Collider. In
the
program, composition students and graduates work together with ensemble musicians on their own pieces. The
collaboration with a professional ensemble and conductor enables the young composers to develop and
professionalize their compositional first drafts, focusing their work on the extended playing techniques of
the individual instruments.
Video: Multiphonics for Flute with Helen
Bledsoe
2012
The Partch-
Instruments
12
Harry Partch created a highly complex tonal system which divides the octave into 43 pitches,
making the realization of his music impossible using classical instruments. The only complete set of
original instruments developed by Harry Partch is found in Seattle at the School of Music at the University
of Washington, a fact which has made one of the forefathers of microtonal music almost unknown in Europe.
For the occasion of the premiere of Partch's masterpiece „Delusion of the Fury“ at the Ruhrtriennale in
2013, the entire microtonal instruments - more than 50 string, bell and keyboard instruments - as well as
smaller hand instruments - were recreated for Ensemble Musikfabrik under the direction of Thomas Meixner: „a
job somewhere between self-abnegation, applied physics and an acoustical Himalaya expedition“ (DIE ZEIT).
This mammoth project was supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the „Kunstsstiftung NRW“.
Video: Harry Partch Project
DelusiOn Of
the Fury
13
„Partch loved the physical presence of his contraptions, and he expected the musicians to act,
hum and sing as well, a request that Ensemble Musikfabrik, as an wildly animated gang of fabulous
individuals, magnificently fulfills.“ Süddeutsche Zeitung, 26.8.2013
In 2013, Heiner Goebbels staged the groundbreaking prelude to further performances of Harry Partch's
Delusion of the Fury – A Ritual of Dream and Delusion (1965-66) with the European premiere at the
opening of the Ruhrtriennale. In „Delusion of the Fury“, the key work and musical quintessence of Harry
Partch‘s oeuvre, Ensemble Musikfabrik becomes the collective protagonist of a musical theater scenery where
most prominently the unusual instruments, but also the actions of the instrumentalists on the stage, present
the unique cosmos of Harry Partch.
Video: The Staging of Delusion of
the Fury
Photos: European Premiere of „Delusion of the Fury“ at the „Ruhrtriennale“
in 2013
© Klaus Rudolph
Label
musikfabrik
14
Label Musikfabrik was founded in 2014. At the online music label, current productions from the Ensemble Musikfabrik recording studio are made accessible to the listener through a mouse click. With now 31 published recordings, including works by Helmut Lachenmann, Rebecca Saunders, John Cage and Mauricio Kagel, Label Musikfabrik offers a musical range that is as multifaceted as our repertoire.
Campus
Musikfabrik
15
From 2015 to 2017, Campus Musikfabrik - the creative
educational and research program of Ensemble Musikfabrik - has been inviting composers, musicians, artists
and concert organizers to several work phases throughout the year to collaborate in open constellations.
Made possible by the Arts Foundation NRW, Campus Musikfabrik is an open platform, where in
laboratory-like rehearsal situations interdisciplinary ways of working together can be found without the
pressure of performance.
Its a great luxury as well as a great necessity for a contemporary music ensemble to be able to explore
new concepts and creative encounters without the constraints of the market. With its concerts, lectures and
discussions, Campus Musikfabrik is also open to the public.
pitch 43_
tuning the cOsmOs
For the first time in Europe through the reconstruction of the Partch instruments, Ensemble Musikfabrik made it possible to discover the fascinating and exotic oeuvre of Harry Partch. The ensemble takes it a step further with pitch 43_tuning the cosmos : composers get the chance to study and compose new works for the unique instruments. The project is a showcase and laboratory at the same time: the presentation of an almost unknown and extremely colorful musical facet of 20th century contemporary music, and a highly topical look at the way young composers of the 21st century engage with the musical heritage of Harry Partch.
Photo: Carola Bauckholt and Dirk Rothbrust playing the
Cloud-Chamber Bowls
© Klaus Rudolph
15
2015
TreE Of COdES
16
„How do the inheritances of our genes, our stories and the unconscious beliefs passed down
through generations, shape who we are, our desires, our curses?“ This is the question asked in the
music-theater piece Tree of Codes by Liza Lim, that celebrated its premiere at the Cologne Opera in
2016. A production that, after the years-long collaboration between the composer, the director Massimo
Furlan and his team, and the ensemble with all its special talents and instruments, was practically
tailor-made for the ensemble. The result was „an exciting discovery for music theater, cleverly conceived
and with an eminent sensuality of sound.“ (Deutschlandradio Kultur)
Video: Liza Lim - Tree of
Codes
Self-PORtrait
16
Ensemble Musikfabrik celebrates its 25th birthday in particular with a series of concerts in its hometown. One highlight is the world premiere of RICHTERS PATTERNS in the Cologne Philharmonie. Cooperations such as these, with the artist Gerhard Richter or with Alexandra Waierstall for a new choreography for John Cage's 16 Dances, provides impetus for interdisciplinary and collaborative creative processes.
2016
2017
Rebecca Saunders
17
"Rebecca Saunders' wealth of tonal vocabulary is overwhelming. The fact that she developed this vocabulary together with the musicians of the ensemble contributes decisively to the tonal beauty. It is the musicians' personal sounds," writes the FAZ after the world premiere of Rebecca Saunders' full-length work Yes at the Musikfest Berlin in September 2017. The spatial collage for voice and ensemble marks the culmination so to date of our inspiring collaboration with Saunders, which has lasted for many years.
COmpOser COllider EurOpe
17
With Composer Collider Europe, Ensemble Musikfabrik will start a four-year cooperation project with the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, the Aristotle University Thessaloniki and the Royal Conservatoire The Hague in 2017, funded by the European Union.
2017
Linkage!
18
After several exchange programmes between Studio Musikfabrik and Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music, the regular cooperation between Akademie Musikfabrik and the Bangkok Conservatory officially begins in 2018. Another central project of the Akademie Musikfabrik will be Linkage! - funded by the German government as part of the initiative "Excellent Orchestra Landscape Germany". Over the next two years, Ensemble Musikfabrik will visit 10 different schools in Cologne and the surrounding area in the context of its "Musikfabrik im WDR" series. Eight new spielBar compositions commissioned especially for the pupils will be created in this context.
Adventure
19
"Where does such a thing exist? Only in dreams or a musical land of milk and honey?" asks the NMZ. The answer is: at Adventure - the cooperation project between Musikfabrik and the Cologne University of Music and Dance. With Adventure, an intensified, long-term collaboration between the Institute for New Music and the Ensemble Musikfabrik begins in 2019, funded by the Ministry for Culture and Science of the State of NRW.
2019
2020
LOckdOwn Tapes
20
At the beginning of the year, the Ensemble Musikfabrik organises a first mini-festival with 5 concerts in its Cologne domicile in the Mediapark, but concert life soon comes to a halt due to the Corona pandemic. During this time, we produce almost 70 lockdown tapes and develop Corona-compliant concert formats.