About Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble

The Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble was founded in March of 1990 by Yuri Kasparov under the sponsorship of Edison Denisov. The purpose of the ensemble is to create a larger audience abroad for Russian music from the 20^th and 21^st centuries and to bring New Music from the West and Asia to Russia. As a result, works by numerous significant figures in 20th century music (Edgard Varèse, Iannis Xenakis, Wolfgang Rihm, Theo Loevendie, György Kurtág, Michael Jarrell, and Anatol Vieru) were performed in Russia for the first time and more than 500 works have been premiered by the ensemble. A further area of emphasis by the ensemble is works by the Russian avant-garde from the 1920s and 1930s as well as the most important composers of the 1960s (Denisov, Schnittke, Gubaidulina). They have recorded more than 40 CDs and have participated in many international festivals, as well as multimedia and theater productions in the East and the West.