Ondřej Adámek

Adámek likes to combine the driving rhythms of minimal music with experimental means such as intermittent breathing or whispering into the instrument, he draws on folk music patterns and formulas. He avoids romantic pathos just as much as esoterically spun l`art-pour-l`art constructions. In this way, Adámek’s music remains comprehensible and targeted at every moment, especially since he always encircles a timeless humanistic core in his music. Süddeutsche Zeitung, Reinhard

The composer and conductor Ondřej Adámek speaks a musical language that embraces elements of distant cultures. Directness and finely formed moments of expression with artfully composed timbres characterize his works, which include orchestral, chamber, vocal, and electroacoustic music.

Born in Prague in 1979, Ondřej Adámek studied composition at the Academy of Music in Prague and at the Conservatory in Paris. As a guest of the DAAD's Berlin Artists' Programme, he moved to Berlin in 2010, where he has lived ever since. During longer stays in France, Africa, Spain, Japan, India, and Italy, he immersed himself in the musical cultures of these countries, which subsequently shaped his own music time and again. But not only initially foreign musical phenomena and instruments of other cultures are mixed into his works. The play with language(s) also emerges as a structuring element in many ways.

In the current season, his critically acclaimed composition Where are you? was taken on a European tour by the London Symphony Orchestra under Simon Rattle with soprano Magdalena Kožená. The work, which was premiered in March by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Simon Rattle, was heard at the Lucerne Festival, the Musikfest Berlin, as well as in Antwerp, Luxembourg, Dortmund, and Bucharest. A new cello concerto will be on the programme later in the season: Figurenspiele premieres in January by Jean-Guihen Queyras with Ensemble Resonanz under the baton of Ondřej Adámek and can then be heard at the Acht Brücken festival in Cologne and at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.

In 2019, it was his Sheng concerto Lost Prayer Book that toured Europe – performed at the WDR Funkhaus, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Southbank Centre London, as well as in Leicester, Den Bosch, and Amsterdam. The soloist Wu Wei performed with various ensembles: the Ensemble Musikfabrik conducted by the composer, the ensemble 2e2m under Pierre Roullier, the London Philharmonia Orchestra under Jonathan Stockhammer, and the Ensemble Asko/Schönberg under Bas Wiegers. The Violin Concerto for Isabelle Faust, entitled Follow Me, which premiered in 2017 with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Peter Rundel, was subsequently performed with the Orchestre de Strasbourg at the Musica festival and with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra under Susanna Mälkki.

His a cappella opera Seven Stones, which premiered in 2018 at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, will be presented again in January 2022 at the Konzerthaus Dortmund. While working on this piece, the idea of founding his own vocal ensemble was born: with NESEVEN, Ondřej Adámek explores the authenticity and originality of the voice as well as theatrical possibilities, as in the work Man Time Stone Time. In 2019, the piece premiered in Witten with the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne under Michael Wendeberg and was again staged at the Festival Présence with the Orchestre de Radio France under Kent Nagano. The world premiere of Schlafen gut. Warm. with the ensemble NESEVEN and the percussion ensemble Eklekto had to be postponed due to corona and will be rescheduled in May 2022 in Marseille. The music theatre Alles klappt for 6 singers and 2 percussionists was premiered with great success at the Biennale München in 2018.

Always in search of sounds that go beyond the conventional orchestral apparatus, Ondřej Adámek developed the installative musical instrument Airmachine through years of experimental work. The mechanical apparatus with rubber gloves, horns, hoses, and all kinds of valves was created for the work Körper und Seele, which premiered in Donaueschingen in 2014 with the SWR Vokalensemble and SWR Symphony Orchestra under François-Xavier Roth. In the meantime, it has taken on a musical life of its own, independent of this work, and has been constantly used and developed in further compositions.

​

2021/22 season

This biography is to be reproduced without any changes, omissions, or additions, unless expressly author-ised by the artist management.