Ostrava – New York. The Continuation of the Essential Concerts Series at DOX in Prague
Publikováno: 21.10.2025
Ostrava, October 21, 2025 – The Ostrava Center for New Music presents its annual concert in Prague on Friday, 21 November at 7:00 pm, this year under the theme Essential Ostrava – New York.
„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, artistic director of Ostrava Center for New Music
The program of the November 21 concert features six orchestral works by composers who, in various ways, have been shaped by the Ostrava–New York axis. It presents music by several generations of composers – from the co-founders of the American and European avant-garde to representatives of the middle and younger generations.
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 Petr Bakla’s (b. 1980) Summer Work, in which the composer explores the principle of duality – a form based not on hierarchy, but on balance. “The two parts represent a shift from somewhere to elsewhere, yet without establishing hierarchy,” Bakla writes. He describes the transition between the two parts as a unique moment “when thousand miles of desert turn into thousand miles of ocean.” The work reflects Bakla’s characteristic style: a focus on structure, silence, and the inner tension that arises from minimal transformations.
American composer Anna Heflin (b. 1993), who has been a resident of the Ostrava Days Institute several times, drew inspiration for her new work Einmal ist keinmal from Milan Kundera’s notion that “once is never.” The musical material mirrors, repeats, and reshapes itself, yet never returns to the same place. “I’m interested in what ‘once’ actually means,” says the composer. “Music can show that no moment ever repeats itself exactly.” Through the constant shifting of layers and perspectives, a sonic poetry of time, memory, and the elusiveness of the moment emerges.
British composer Richard Ayres (b. 1965) turns the tradition of the solo concerto upside down in his No. 30 (NONcerto for orchestra, cello, and high soprano). Here, the cello has a “spiritual twin” in the soprano, and their relationship shifts from playful exaggeration to tragicomic absurdity. “The cellist gradually disappears in the orchestral climax and tries to sing before being ‘swept away’ by a series of glissandi ending with brutal blows to the piano,” the composer explains. Ayres’s music moves fluidly between humor, grotesque, and existential tension – always with an unmistakable precision and attention to detail.
The second part of the evening is dedicated to Petr Kotík, Roscoe Mitchell, and Alvin Lucier – three composers whose names have been associated for decades with the musical life of both Ostrava and New York. Kotík’s Fragment began taking shape in 1997, and its mutable material is the result of continuous revision. “Out of the original seven hundred measures, I removed three hundred,” recalls the composer. “The remaining fragment became the foundation for a new piece – and eventually also for my next orchestral work.” Music critic Kyle Gann once wrote of Fragment: “Nothing I’ve heard an orchestra do in years has been more original, more surprising, and more exquisitely etched at the same time.”
The evening concludes with Alvin Lucier (1931–2021) and his composition Sweepers (1997), commissioned by Petr Kotík and the S.E.M. Ensemble. In this work, Lucier divides the orchestra into two groups – strings that move in subtle chromatic shifts, and winds with vibraphones sustaining long tones. The tones approach and recede from each other, creating audible interferences – like wind passing through a field in constant motion. In this delicate exploration of space and sound, Lucier’s lifelong fascination with acoustic phenomena and the act of listening fully comes to light.
The evening’s conductors, Petr Kotík and Jiří Rožeň, collaborate regularly both in Ostrava and on international projects. A particularly remarkable example of their partnership was the joint performance of Luigi Nono’s opera Prometeo (Ostrava, NODO 2022, available to watch here).
The virtuosic solo parts in Ayres’s composition are being prepared by Andrej Gál (cello) and Beatriz Gaudêncio Ramos (soprano). The Prague Philharmonia, which has long been dedicated to contemporary music and is the only orchestra in the Czech Republic to maintain an entire concert series devoted to it, continues its fruitful collaboration with the Ostrava Center for New Music. The connection between Ostrava and New York will thus be evoked once again at Prague’s DOX+, as a space where the music of today firmly belongs and thrives.
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.
