E-MEX Ensemble
Biography E-MEX Ensemble
E-MEX Ensemble
which specializes in contemporary music of a wide variety of shades and colors, was founded in 1999. E-MEX has set itself the goal of making the boundaries between genres, styles, and art forms as permeable as possible. This has been demonstrated by numerous concerts in museums whose programs refer to exhibitions or particular exhibits, and by frequent, close cooperation with very diverse personalities of the contemporary music scene as well as from the fields of jazz, sound, video, and performance art, dance, and acting.
Composers from Germany, France, Eastern Europe, the USA, China, and Korea have written works for E-MEX. E-MEX frequently relates recent works to music from other eras in order to create points of connection and access for the audience.
Many CD productions bear witness to the ensemble’s cooperation with broadcasters such as SWR, WDR, and Deutschlandfunk. Concert tours regularly take E-MEX to other European countries, South America, the USA, and Asian countries.
In 2023, the GENUIN album Sterne steigen dort ... featuring music by the rediscovered composer Maria Herz won the German Record Critics’ Award.
Christoph Maria Wagner
studied composition and conducting at the Cologne University of Music and Dance and has taught there since 1995.
As a conductor, he has worked with Helmut Lachenmann, Mauricio Kagel, Klaus Huber, Nicolaus A. Huber, and Martin Matalon as well as with ensembles such as the Ensemble Modern and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie. He has performed as a guest conductor at the Cologne Opera, the Cologne Schauspielhaus, the WDR Funkhausorchester, the Bochumer Symphoniker, the ohton-Ensemble Oldenburg, and the DoelenEnsemble Rotterdam.
He has enjoyed a long collaboration with the E-MEX Ensemble, which has included many avant-garde classics in addition to world premieres.
His catalogue of works includes almost sixty compositions, many very extensive, and encompasses a wide variety of instrumental combinations and genres. In addition to piano music, the remiX group of works and music theater form a focus of his oeuvre. He has given guest lectures and master classes at the University of New Mexico and Codarts Rotterdam. In November 2023, he was Composer in Residence at the Izmir New Music Days, Turkey.
As a pianist, he has appeared throughout Europe and the USA. He has often performed Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata and, in addition to his own works, André Jolivet’s piano cycle Mana and Anton Webern’s Piano Variations, Op. 27 for WDR. He has performed his Piano Concerto as a soloist several times, including at the Gaudeamus Festival Amsterdam.
In addition to his compositional work, Wagner is also active as an arranger. His arrangements will soon be published by Schott and Boosey & Hawkes.
