Ensemble mise-en’s Portrait Series seeks to celebrate the landmark works of distinguished composers of contemporary music. This series is presents the music of these composers to a wide spectrum of listeners who are engaged in or curious about contemporary music from around the globe.
In this performance, Ensemble mise-en will be presenting works by Danish composer Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (1932 – 2016).
About Ensemble mise-en
Ensemble mise-en is a New York-based contemporary music collective led by composer Moon Young Ha. Comprising talented young musicians, it strives to bring a repertoire of challenging new sounds to diverse audiences. The ensemble strives to impart an experience that is simultaneously multi-cultural, intellectually stimulating, and aesthetically pleasing. As a collective, the multi-national group has coalesced around an aesthetic agenda, crystallized in the name mise-en: “mee,” in Korean means “beauty,” and “zahn” “to decorate,” and the group unabashedly promotes “beautiful” artwork to increasingly diverse audiences of contemporary sounds.
The ensemble promotes large-scale, dynamic performances of contemporary music featuring the works of established and budding composers. Since its inception in 2011, ensemble mise-en has collaborated with many esteemed partners such as: Washington Square Contemporary Music Society, International Alliance for Women in Music, Austrian Cultural Forum New York, Open Meadows Foundation, New York University, New York Foundation for the Arts, I-Park, Goethe-Institute Boston, Villa Gillet, and others. To date, the ensemble has presented a total of 208 pieces, including 86 works written for the group, and 54 US/NY premieres. The ensemble has performed at exciting venues such as (le) poisson rouge, Bohemian National Hall, Italian Academy, the DiMenna Center, Tenri Cultural Institute, and the cell.
About Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (1932 – 2016) has often been described as the Contrary Mary of Danish music: an anti-expressive, anti-virtuoso, anti-romantic sceptic; a lover of the absurd theatre of Samuel Beckett and its grim, black but also tender humour; a pessimist who did not believe in big words and swelling harmonies, far less mankind’s finely wrought systems and truths. Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Pelle was the son of the sculptor Jørgen Gudmundsen-Holmgreen.
He studied theory, musical history and composition at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen with Finn Høffding, Svend Westergaard, Bjørn Hjelmborg, and Vagn Holmboe (instrumentation), where he graduated in 1958, and went on to make his début as a composer in 1955 at the Music Festival of the Scandinavian Conservatories with Variationer for cello solo (1954). Amongst other works, he composed fourteen string quartets and a Concerto Grosso for string quartet and orchestra, written for the Kronos Quartet, which he referred to as Vivaldi on Safari (Cornelius 2016). He won the Nordic Council Music Prize in 1980 for his Symfoni/Antifoni.
“The composer who finds beauty in absurdity” —The Guardian
Photo by Lars Skaaning
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Image by Julia Hembree
THU—MAY 16—8 PM
$15 ($10 for ASF Members)