Ensemble Nikel is a group of five musicians from Basel, Brussels, Lausanne and Tel Aviv that present new contemporary chamber music in which the challenge of combining electric and acoustic instruments as a single evolving musical organism is dealt with and researched.
Even though the instrumentation of the Ensemble basically consists of instruments which were more or less developed in the 20th century (saxophone, electric guitar, drums and double bass in combination with the timeless piano), the Ensemble covers a wide stylistic range – from Webern to Aperghis, from Cage to Murail and from Scelsi to Reich. An Ensemble Nikel concert aims to take the audience on a harmonious journey in order to present the latest access to contemporary music.
The Ensemble Nikel was founded in 2006 by Yaron Deutsch and Gan Lev together with Amir Lavie and Benjamin Hochman. Since then, the Ensemble has been invited to numerous festivals, including the Wien Modern Festival, the Ultraschall Festival, the Bang on a Can Festival and the Klangspuren Festival.
In 2009 and 2010, the Ensemble Nikel, with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, was able to perform new works by Philipp Hurel, Eduardo Moguillansky, Marco Mommi and Yuval Shaked, as well as present the first recordings of Chaya Czernowin‘s piece ‹Sahaf› released on the Wergo Label.
Supported by IGNM Basel
