Ensemble Vortex

To describe Ensemble Vortex as whirlwind is a useful pleonasm, because it emphasises the extreme concentric mobility of an enterprising team of young performers and composers who are globally trained in most of the homologated musical practices, in the service of a sustained policy of creation. Hence the observation that Vortex has a continuously expanding repertoire: more than a hundred works commissioned and created to date. At the source of this innovative effervescence was the 2005 meeting of a dozen young musicians from here and elsewhere (Switzerland, Europe, Latin America) from the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève, in particular from the composition class of Eric Gaudibert, whose intense and generous personality accompanied the adventurous development of Vortex until his own death in 2012.

By sharpening its mastery of current modes of musical writing and production, including digital and electroacoustic technology, Vortex has only confirmed its original commitment to stylistic openness. The ensemble is favoured by the individual or collective collaboration of its members with other ensembles and forms of expression: improvisation, jazz, ethnomusic, dance, theatre, installations, radio. Several Vortexians have skills in visual arts, and a persistent interest in multimedia experimentation has stimulated this desire to vary the musical gesture and to broaden its applications.

Such an approach, methodically pursued, is obviously the result of the general evolution of artistic action. From one event to the next, it allows Vortex to diversify its reference points, to emulate, and to create and renew opportunities for active convergence with potential partners, musicians or not. Soloists and guest groups contribute to the density of concerts, especially in Geneva where, in the course of seasons that are often broadcast, the ensemble regularly participates in the spring meetings of the Archipel festival. But also in other centres of cultural activity in Switzerland and in countries near and far: from Lausanne to Basel, Bern and Bordeaux, from La Rochelle to Melbourne, from Brisbane to Lisbon and Saint Petersburg, from Amsterdam to Buenos Aires. Developments to follow.