Founded in 1980 and situated in Frankfurt am Main since 1985, the Ensemble Modern (EM) is one of the world's leading ensembles of New Music. Its founding members were originally students of the Young German Philharmonic Orchestra who wanted to create an ensemble with a grass-roots organization devoted to promoting and accurately performing New Music. The EM became a private shareholding company in 1987, and the musicians in the ensemble became its associates. The ensemble has a rich cultural background with currently 18 soloists from Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, Germany, India, Japan, Poland, and Switzerland.

The EM is famous for its special working and organizational form which is unlike any other in the world. All the members are responsible for jointly selecting and dealing with artistic directors, projects, guest musicians, co-productions, and financial matters. Each associate incorporates his/her own personal experience and preferences into the planning, the result of which is a unique and distinctive program, ranging from music theater, dance and video projects to chamber music, ensemble and orchestral concerts. Its program has spawned extraordinary and often long-term cooperative ventures with renowned artists, such as Heiner Goebbels, Frank Zappa, Bill Viola and Steve Reich.

In past years, the EM has gone on tour to Russia, South America, Japan, Australia, India, Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. It participates in renowned festivals on a regular basis, such as the Lincoln Center Festival in New York, settembre musica in Torino, Festival d'Automne in Paris, Ars Musica Festival in Brussels, Holland Festival in Amsterdam, Lucerne Festival, Klangspuren in Schwaz, and the festivals in Salzburg and Berlin.
The EM also guest-performs at outstanding venues throughout Germany. It has performed a subscription concert series at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt since 1985. In cooperation with the Oper Frankfurt, the EM regularly performs opera productions and workshop concerts titled "Happy New Ears" in which key works of contemporary music are presented and explained. The EM closely cooperates with numerous German music venues, including the Kölner Philharmonie, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Philharmonie Essen, and the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden.

The EM gives approximately 100 concerts each year. The ensemble strives to achieve the highest degree of authenticity by working closely with the composers themselves. The musicians rehearse an average of 70 new works every year, 20 of which are world premieres.

In 2003, the German Federal Cultural Foundation nominated the Ensemble Modern as one of Germany's "beacons" of contemporary culture. With this honor, the Ensemble Modern received a five-year funding package from the federal government in 2004 to support two important projects at the Ensemble Modern - the Ensemble Modern Orchestra and the International Ensemble Modern Academy.

The Ensemble Modern Orchestra (EMO) was established in 1998 to perform its own full-complement works. It is the first orchestra in the world solely devoted to performing music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Its efforts are project-related, i.e., the core formation of EM soloists are joined by New Music specialists and young musicians from around the world to form the EMO once or twice each year.

The International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA) - one of the EM's most important projects for the future - was founded in summer 2003 to research and teach the most diverse forms of contemporary music and offer the next generation of musicians the fruits of the ensemble's musical experience and competence. With funding from the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Kunststiftung NRW, the IEMA awards grants to musicians who live and study in Germany. Furthermore, it offers master courses at the Klangspuren Festival in Schwaz, Austria, and for the first time in 2005, also in Japan and Korea. In cooperation with the Paxos Spring Festival, the IEMA offers a summer academy in Greece, and with funding from the Allianz Cultural Foundation, it holds an annual International Composition Seminar, at which George Benjamin lectured in 2005. Since 1996, the EM has organized a young talent forum together with the GNM (Society for New Music) to promote composers, instrumentalists, and musicologists in the field of New Music. This forum has intensively supported numerous young, talented artists, such as Enno Poppe, Vadim Karassikov, Sebastian Stier and Johannes Maria Staud.

The Ensemble Modern is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the German Ensemble Academy Assoc., the city of Frankfurt, the state of Hesse, the GEMA Foundation, and the GVL.

hr2-kultur is media partner of the Ensemble Modern.

The musicians of the Ensemble Modern would like to thank the Aventis Foundation for financing a seat in the Ensemble.