Essential Ostrava – New York: Music Between Two Continents at DOX+
Publikováno: 22.9.2025
Ostrava, September 22, 2025 – The Ostrava Center for New Music presents another concert in its ESSENTIAL series at DOX+. This time, the program takes as its starting point the axis Ostrava – New York, a connection that has brought together composers and performers from around the world for over a quarter of a century and continues to attract audiences both at home and abroad. Now, the Prague audience will also witness this dialogue of the transatlantic avant-garde. Alvin Lucier, together with Petr Kotík, stood at the very beginnings of the Ostrava Days festival (more than twenty-five years ago, the idea of Ostrava Days was developed in New York by composers P. Kotík, A. Lucier, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff). The festival has long been home to Roscoe Mitchell and Petr Bakla, while the youngest generation of composers is represented by the returning Anna Heflin. Richard Ayres is one of the artists who has always gone “against the current,” and for more than fifteen years he has been bringing his works to life in Ostrava.
„Artworks do not come into being on their own. The place that enables their creation always remains connected to them. For music of our time, that place over the past quarter century has been Ostrava in connection with New York. The concert program presents just a small glimpse of the work of composers whose pieces would not exist in their current form without the Ostrava–New York axis.“
– Petr Kotík
ESSENTIAL OSTRAVA – NEW YORK
November 21, 2025
7:00 PM, Multifunctional Hall DOX+
Andrej Gál, violoncello
Beatriz Gaudêncio Ramos, soprano
Prague Philharmonia
Petr Kotík, conductor
Jiří Rožeň, conductor
Petr Bakla: Summer Work (2016)
Anna Heflin: Einmal ist keinmal (2025)
Richard Ayres: No. 30 (NONcerto for orchestra, cello and high soprano, 2001)
–intermission–
Petr Kotík: Fragment (1998)
Roscoe Mitchell: Nonaah for Orchestra (2023)
Alvin Lucier: Sweepers (1997)
The evening opens with Summer Work (2016) by Prague-based composer Petr Bakla (b. 1980). The work is characterized by a “mass of sound in which every voice carries its own specific gravity” (Amadeus Magazine), creating the impression of a static yet richly multicolored space. It is followed by the world premiere of Einmal ist keinmal (2025) by American composer Anna Heflin (b. 1993), unfolding in shimmering layers and revealing unexpected hidden corners of the orchestral sound. The first half of the concert closes with a piece by British composer Richard Ayres (b. 1965), known for his irony and humor. His No. 30 (NONcerto for orchestra, cello, and high soprano) is both playful and absurd, sounding like “a circus band on drugs” (as conductor Roland Kluttig once described Ayres’s music). The solo parts will be performed by Slovak cellist Andrej Gál and Portuguese soprano Beatriz Gaudêncio Ramos. The first half of the evening is conducted by Jiří Rožeň, who despite his young age has been closely connected with OCNH projects for several years. In 2022, for example, he and Petr Kotík jointly conducted Luigi Nono’s extraordinary staged work Prometeo. Tragedia dell‘ascolto at the Ostrava opera festival NODO / New Opera Days Ostrava (for four orchestras, narrators, soloists, choir, two conductors—spread across eight stages—and a large-scale electronic installation). A recording is available on our YouTube channel.
The second half of the evening opens with a work by Petr Kotík (b. 1942), founder of the Ostrava Center for New Music, whose artistic career has unfolded along the Ostrava–New York axis for nearly thirty years. On the program is his Fragment (1998). “This monumental composition with a modest title belongs among the finest works ever written for large instrumental forces,” wrote music critic and composer Kyle Gann in The Village Voice following its premiere at Lincoln Center in New York. Roscoe Mitchell (b. 1940), a legend of progressive jazz and founding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, created a new version of his iconic piece Nonaah (2023) for Kotík’s New York SEM Ensemble. Tubist Ben Stapp described the work as “an eye-opening experience.” The piece will receive its Prague premiere at this concert. One of the key figures of the American avant-garde was Alvin Lucier (1931–2021), longtime professor at Wesleyan University. Of his Sweepers (1997), his colleague, composer Ron Kuivila, noted: “Nothing here is entirely stable. Sound spreads and transforms like a field of tall grass stirred by a gentle breeze.” Lucier wrote his unique orchestral compositions exclusively for the Ostrava Days festival. Their creation was initiated—and their performances conducted—by Petr Kotík. The same will be true at DOX+.
The Ostrava Center for New Music has collaborated with the Prague Philharmonia in the past—both at Ostrava Days in Ostrava and within the Contemporary Music Cycles S in Prague. In 2021, the partnership also brought a major ESSENTIAL concert at DOX+ featuring a work by Bernhard Lang. This year’s collaboration between the two institutions is thus a natural outcome of their previous successful projects in the field of today’s music.
Tickets: 500 CZK / 300 CZK (students, seniors). Available via GoOut.
The concert is organized by the Ostrava Center for New Music in collaboration with the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art. With financial support from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the City of Prague, the City of Ostrava, Veronika and Libor Winkler, and Martin and Hana Vohánka.
