“Waterloo 2” – Rhys Chatham

Founded in 1970 by Petr Kotik, S.E.M. Ensemble is dedicated to the performance and advancement of new music. Kotik established The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble in 1992, with its Carnegie Hall performance of “A Tribute to John Cage.” Since this concert, SEM Orchestra has toured Europe five times and, in 1997, performed at the Toru Takemitsu Memorial Concert in Tokyo. In New York, the orchestra has presented major concerts at Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center, and Willow Place Auditorium in Brooklyn. SEM Orchestra has released recordings on Wergo, Asphodel, and Dog w/a Bone labels. Since 1999 S.E.M. has been collaborating with the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the 5 major orchestras of the Czech Republic. Together they have created a repertoire of works for 3 orchestras, which includes Gruppen by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Nest by Martin Smolka, Modules I,II,III by Earle Brown, and Diamonds by Alvin Lucier. These pieces were performed at the Prague Spring Festival, the Warsaw Autumn Festival and the Ostrava Days 2001 Festival, featuring the Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble, the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra, and conductors Petr Kotik, Christian Arming, and Zsolt Nagy. Over the past ten years, the repertoire of SEM has included compositions by Brown, Wolff, Lucier, Cage, Feldman, Kotik, Phil Niblock, Somei Satoh, Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, Muhal Richard Abrams, Leroy Jenkins, Robin Haller, and Sinan Savaskan. This repertoire, much of it written specifically for the orchestra, represents the core of SEM’s artistic and intellectual pursuits. Petr Kotik, Artistic Director Born and educated in Europe, composer Petr Kotik (born 1942), has been living in the United Stated since 1969. A New York City resident, Kotik is a performing musician (conductor and flutist) and the founder and director of the S.E.M. Ensemble which expanded in 1992 The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble (debut at Carnegie Hall tribute to John Cage with soloist David Tudor). Among Kotik's best known compositions are Many Many Women (1976-78) on a text by Gertrude Stein and Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1978-81) on texts by R. Buckminster Fuller as well as recent orchestral works Quiescent Form (1996) and Music in Two Movements (1998-2002). Music in Two Movements is a nearly hour long composition divided into two movements, Fragment and Asymmetric Landing, which can be performed together or seperately. It was premiered in Alice Tully Hall in April 2002. Kotik has been the recipient of composition grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the prestigious composition award from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts in 1997. (For more information about Petr Kotik please go to www.pkotik.com) This double CD-set is the companion to the final book reporting on the activities of Het Apollohuis. The recordings on these CDs give an idea of the music and the sound art presented in concerts at Het Apollohuis in the priod from 1980 through 1997. Out of a total of 500 performances I chose 38, from which exceprts of varying lenght have been included in this anthiology. These have been arranged in chronological order. The diversity of the selected pieces is characteristic of the programme of Het Apollohuis. Only limited number of composers and musicians who performed can be heard in brief fragments o these discs. Consequently a considerable number has been excluded. There simply was no way to include them all (this selection does not imply we value one above the other). The choice of the particular musicians has been my responsability (P: Panhuysen). liner notes: René van Peer sound selection: René Adriaans mastering: Frank Donkersgoed design: Tom Homburg, Marcel d'Anjou (Opera)