Ostravská banda in New York

ART OF
MUSIC & IDEAS

Czech – American – Czech

Ostravská banda & S.E.M. Ensemble
Jiří Rožeň & Petr Kotik, conductors

„I have not seen anything close to what you are doing here in Prague.“
John Cage, 1964

It happened in the fall of 1960, when Luigi Nono stopped in Prague on his way from Warsaw to Venice and met Petr Kotik. Nono gave him transcripts of lectures from Darmstadt (at that time, the summer institute in Darmstadt was the most important meeting place for young composers). Kotik, then an 18-year old starting composer, shared this material with his friends. They all were initially looking for texts by Stockhausen, Boulez, Pousseur, and other well-known European avant-garde composers. Instead, the most interesting texts they found were by John Cage. As they became more familiar with the thoughts, concepts and the music that originated in New York around Cage, their interest and appreciation for it only increased – despite the opposition and attacks from all sides, from Pierre Boulez to professors at conservatories. Ultimately, these texts by Cage and Christian Wolff were translated into Czech and distributed as a samizdat and had an impact on most of the entire non-conformist arts community in the Czech Republic. Curiously, it happened in a country that was, at the time, locked up behind the Iron Curtain. Although later in the 1970s and 80s, the influence of Cage and other American composers, like Wolff and Morton Feldman, spread gradually throughout Europe, Prague and the Czech Republic was the first place where it had an important impact.

April 20, 2023, 7 pm
BROOKLYN COLLEGE
Leonard & Claire Tow Center / Buchwald Theater
2920 Campus Rd, Brooklyn 11210

Roscoe Mitchell: Nonaah (1977)
Jan Rychlík: African Cycle (1961)
Frederic Rzewski: Les Moutons de Panurge (1969)
František Chaloupka: The Witch Waltzers (2023)
Philip Glass: Two Pages (1968)
Phill Niblock: Petr’s Charm (2021)

>>> RSVP here

April 21, 2023, 7 pm
BOHEMIAN NATIONAL HALL
Czech Center NY
321 E 76rd St, New York 10021

Petr Kotik: Nine + 1 (2014–15)
Petr Bakla: Elsewhere (2017)
Christian Wolff: Trust (2012)
Roscoe Mitchell: Improvisation
Pauline Oliveros: Four Meditations for Orchestra (1997)
Jana Vörösová: Oratio Phillipica (2021)
Pavel Zemek Novák: Quartet no. 3 / In Memory of Evžen Plocek (1998)
Rudolf Komorous: Olympia (1964)