Share the Space - Ondřej Adámek

The premiere of Ondřej Adámek’s Share the Space took place Sunday 10th September 2017 at 4pm as part of BCMG’s Canal Serenade, with a further repeat weekend performance later that month on 23rd September as part of Birmingham Weekender.

Born in Prague in 1979, Ondřej Adámek has received commissions from ensembles and contemporary music festivals across Europe, including Ensemble Intercontemporain, Klangforum Wien, Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, Diotima string quartet, Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, Agora festival, Donaueschingen festival, Witten festival, Warsaw Automn, and Les Musiques festival, Marseille.

Adámek seeks out new ways of playing classical instruments, obtaining a very specific sound colour that, together with a powerful rhythmic and solid, formal architecture, creates personal, yet dramatic, music. His works feature unconventional, often extra-classical instrumentation, including the composer’s own ‘airmachine’.

The colourful history of Birmingham’s canal network will serve as the inspiration for Adámek’s commission. The composer will write a duet as an ode to the bustling arteries of the city’s industrious past, his piece being conceived to intertwine musically with Richard Baker’s Sound Investment commission. The work will take its inspiration literally, being performed on the water, in the first of BCMG’s concerts exploring spaces outside of traditional venues.

Extensive excerpts of the composer’s work, including more footage of his enigmatic airmachine in action can be found at ondrejadamek.com

Adámek graduated from the composition department of the Academy of Music in Prague in 2004 and from the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Paris in 2007.

His music was awarded the Synthèse Prize (Bourges 2002), Metamorphose (Brussels 2002, 2004), First Prize of Hungarian Radio, the Brandenburg Biennale prize (2006), the Prix Hervé-Dugardin – SACEM (2009), the Grand Prix Tansman (Lodz 2010), the Prix George Enesco 2011, and others. Between 2014-15, Adámek was a resident in the Villa Medici, Rome.