UMZE Ensemble: Sneakers Around the Golden Age

28 September 2025. 7:00pm
Budapest Music Center - Concert Hall
1093 Budapest, Mátyás utca 8.

Even if “the accidental meeting of the sewing machine and the umbrella on the dissecting table” (@Kassák) doesn't happen, we are confronted with a “bag of unsatisfying scissors” this evening with the music by the now-classic Calcutta-born Englishman Clarence Barlow. On the occasion of our friend Gyula Csapó's 70th birthday, we will listen to who and with what purpose are sneaking around a certain Golden Age in the Western hemisphere: in the United States, Canada and England; last but not least, we will introduce George Lewis to the Hungarian audience. George Emanuel Lewis (b. 1952) is an American composer, performer and researcher of experimental music. He is best known for his work as an improvisational trombonist and as a pioneer of computer music, and has received numerous awards, including the MacArthur Fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and the American Book Award. The latter for his book Power Stronger Than Itself. Lewis is Professor of American Music, Composition and Music History at Columbia University and Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in New York. Our concert will close with his work Assemblage, and we plan to welcome the composer through a live video chat as the concert opens. Following Handshake after shot, we will be joined by a new Csapó-opus, freshly composed for today's concert, as well as the always magical music of Claude Vivier and George Crumb setting the echoes of Autumn to music.