The S.E.M. Ensemble is dedicated to the performance and advancement of new music, with a focus on works that can best be described as post-Cagean. Since its inception in 1970, SEM has collaborated with composers who also often perform with the group. They have included, among others, Earle Brown, John Cage, Alvin Lucier, Morton Feldman, Alvin Singleton, Leroy Jenkins, Pauline Oliveros, Elliott Sharp, Jackson Mac Low, Roscoe Mitchell, Phill Niblock, David Tudor, and Christian Wolff. Since 1972, The S.E.M. Ensemble has also performed extensively overseas, touring Europe once or twice every season. In 1997, SEM performed at the Takemitsu Memorial Concert at Oji Hall in Tokyo. S.E.M. Ensemble began presenting concerts at the Paula Cooper Gallery in 1976 and it has become a tradition around Christmas time to also program a piece of early music. This year the program includes Vivaldi’s Flute Concerto.

Sam Hillmer (born 1978) has been living and performing in New York since 1998. He studied saxophone with Robert Mintzer and composition with Dr. Mark Stambaugh at the Manhattan School of Music. Hillmer is a co-founder of the chamber ensemble/band "Zs" and the young composers’ collective Wet Ink. Hillmer is presently studying composition at SUNY Stony Brook with Peter Winkler.

The premiere of “...what won’t come...” by Hillmer is a new, expanded version of a piece with the same title, performed by a smaller ensemble at the Bowery Poetry Club and the Ostrava Days Festival in August 2005. Its title stems from a quote by the composer Luigi Nono that reads, “What will come will come, what won’t come, won’t come.”

The music of Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), composed for the residents of the Pio Ospedale della Pieta orphanage for girls in Venice to play, contains a surprising level of virtuosity and complexity for students at such an institution, making demands of the players that could probably not be made today. An accomplished violinist, Vivaldi was a member of Cappella di San Marco, but left the orchestra in 1703 to be ordained as a priest, a position he could not maintain due to illness. Within a year he had retired both from his church duties and from actively playing the violin, and begun to teach at the orphanage.

Solo compositions for the flute first appeared in France and Italy at the end of the 17th century as a result of improvements in the instrument’s construction. Flute concerti did not become common, however, until the 1720s. The flute as a solo instrument became popular in Venice only after a visit from the famous German flutist and composer Johann Joachim Quantz in 1726. Vivaldi composed 6 flute concertos under opus 10 (of which “La Notte” is the second) in 1728 on commission from the Amsterdam publisher Michel-Charles Le Cène, who published them that same year.


The Greek composer Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) studied engineering at the Athens Polytechnic. He moved to Paris in 1947 and worked for the architectural team of Le Corbusier. The two collaborated on the design of the Philips pavilion for the Brussels Exposition of 1958. Xenakis often based his compositions, especially his early pieces, on the designs he created for his architectural projects. In his compositional method, Xenakis used different mathematical principles to generate mass musical textures, including Gaussian Distribution, the Markov chain, game theory, and probability theory.

Mikka and Mikka “S” (dedicated to Mica Salabert) were Xenakis’ first works for solo violin. The pieces can be played separately or as a single work. Here, Xenakis explores the use of glissandos. The pieces were commissioned and written for Xenakis’ publisher Mme. Francis Salabert.

Petr Kotik (born 1942, Prague) has lived in the United States since 1969. He is an active composer, conductor, and flutist and is the founder and Director of S.E.M. Ensemble and The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble. Kotik has received numerous composition grants and commissions including from the National Endowment for the Arts and the West German Radio in Cologne. In 1998 he was given the prestigious composition award from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts. In 2003 Kotik was a resident composer in Berlin under the sponsorship of Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). His most recent major composition, the 40 min. Variations for 3 Orchestras (totaling 86 musicians) was premiered, to critical acclaim, at the Ostrava Days 2005 festival last August by the Janacek Philharmonic.

Spheres & Attraction, for voice, string quartet and percussion, is based on the 1981 commencement speech R. Buckminster Fuller gave at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Fuller said, “… if I am doing what the Universe wants done, which is to say, ... what God wants done, I don’t have to worry about not being commissioned by anybody and I don’t have to worry about how we are going to acquire the money, tools, and services necessary If I am doing what evolution wants done, I need spend no time worrying about such matters…I hope …that [I] will prove to be an encouraging example of what the little, average human being can do if you have absolute faith in God” (please see the enclosed text).

Kotik states, “I had long forgotten the exact content of the text, having not looked at it for almost 25 years, I was
astonished to see how fitting and relevant the text is in the context of the present environment and particularly how fitting it is for a Christmas concert at the Paula Cooper Gallery.”

The soloist and chamber musician Conrad Harris (born 1969, Kansas City, Missouri), is known for his performances of contemporary music. He has toured Asia, Europe, South America and the United States performing contemporary works. He is concertmaster of The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble and Ostravská banda as well as a member for the Flux Quartet. Mr. Harris has also performed at Ostrava Days 2005 and the Darmstadt festivals. His performance of Iannis Xenakis’s Dihkhthas for violin and piano was enthusiastically received at the Gulbenkian Encounters of New Music (Lisbon). He has recorded for Hyperion, Asphodel, CRI, Lovely Music, and Vinyl Retentive Records.

Gayla Morgan, soprano, began her colorful music career as a classical violinist, followed quickly by western/folk singing and fiddling ("The Trailriders"), big band tunes ("The Cosmo Valente Swing Orch"), and musical theater (NYC: Dreamhouse., Justine's Red; Regional: Grapes of Wrath). She has premiered contemporary art songs in NYC (Eleanor Cory; Mark Grant and Ilse Gilbert) and appeared on the 2005 Sound of New Music Series at St. Marks-in- the-Bowery. She has appeared onstage with Peter Schickele ("PDQ Bach"); has soloed with NY Virtuoso Singers, Amor Artis, and the Hunter College Choir; and was one of the 6 members of The Western Wind Vocal Ensemble for 5 years. Her solo recordings include Perchance to Dream (music of Joseph Marcello), Have A Funky Holiday (Mercury Orchestra Christmas CD), and pictures (original music). Several of her vocal arrangements are featured on Western Wind's Christmas CD, Holiday Light.

A graduate of the London’s Royal Academy of Music, the tenor Steven Fox performs with Pomerium, New York Virtuoso Singers, AmorArtis and the choirs of St. Thomas Church, Trinity Church, Wall Street and St. Ignatius Loyola. Mr. Fox is also the conductor and founder of Musica Antiqua St. Petersburg, Russia's first period-instrument orchestra, and he is the newly appointed Artistic Director of Clarion Music Society in New York. With Musica Antiqua St. Petersburg, he has revived the works of many of the finest Russian 18th-century composers, such as Dmitri Bortniansky, Maxim Berezvosky, and Evstigney Fomin, and has performed worldwide.

For more information
About S.E.M. Ensemble: www.semEnsemble.org
About Sam Hillmer: www.zzzsss.com and www.wetink.org
About Conrad Harris: www.fluxquartet.com

S.E.M. Ensemble, Inc.
25 Columbia Place
Brooklyn, NY 11201
info@semEnsemble.org