ENSEMBLE NIKEL

Im Rahmen des Zurich International Saxfest 2017 spielt das Ensemble Nikel ein Konzert im Musikklub im Toni Areal.

The Ensemble Nikel is a quartet consisting of saxophone, electric guitar, percussion and piano.

These instruments, mostly evolving in the 20th century were joined together to form a new chamber music output where electric and acoustic sounds are to be melted into a unified organism bridging between, not only different sources of mechanical waves, but also aesthetic prejudice and dichotomies of musical genres.

In its quest of exploring its audio spectral artistic possibilities, the group has been presenting an ongoing subscribers series in Tel Aviv & Haifa, Initiating conceptual projects with changing partners, soloists or ensembles and above all collaborate with composers in developing new repertoire. Among the composers who wrote for the ensemble one can find Raphaël Cendo, Chaya Czernowin, Clemens Gadenstaetter, Philippe Hurel, Eduardo Moguillansky, Marco Momi, Helmut Oehring, Stefan Prins, Jose Maria Sanchez Verdu and Michael Wertmüller to name a few.

FOUNDED IN 2006

by Yaron Deutsch and Gan Lev, the ensemble became a frequent guest in honorable festivals such as Wien Modern, Donauecshinger Musiktage, Ultraschall (Berlin), Bang on a Can (New York), International Summer Course for New Music Darmstadt, ArsMusica (Brussels) Klangspuren (Schwaz) and Warsaw Autumn among others.

Along side its changing chamber concerts and concert programs, the ensemble is also touring with recent concrete developed projects such as “Zohar Iver” – a concerto for Ensemble Nikel and Orchestra by composer Chaya Czernowin; “rAVE nIGHT” – an audio visual techno spectacle based on a 50 minute work by Alexander Schubert for Nikel, Singer Mohna, lights & electronics (Premiered in Wien Modern festival 2015) & our pedagogic performance project titled – “Nikel, mINus One” (Premiered at the Darmstaedter FerienKurse 2014) . For further details about these projects please visit the Features page on this website.