Grupo Enigma
where past and future meet in the present
Grupo Enigma, founded in 1995, is one of the leading chamber orchestras in Spain. Resident ensemble of the Zaragoza Auditorium since its inception, Enigma has established itself through a bold and constantly evolving program, where tradition enters into dialogue with new contemporary forms of expression.
The Grupo Enigma comprises nearly twenty soloists, giving the orchestra a versatile and adaptable character, capable of tackling repertoires ranging from solo and chamber music to large orchestral works. Their repertoire encompasses everything from the great 20th-century composers to the most contemporary works, including masterpieces from our musical history such as Bach, Handel, Schubert, Haydn, and Beethoven. Contemporary Aragonese music has always held a special interest for the group, which commissions and premieres works by composers from the region.
The group regularly performs in Spain's leading concert halls and festivals, having appeared at the National Auditorium, the Mérida International Classical Theatre Festival, the Conde Duque Centre, the Teatros del Canal, L'Auditori in Barcelona, the Botín Foundation, the Reina Sofía Museum Auditorium 400, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, the Ensems Festival, the Palau de la Música in Valencia, the University of Navarra Museum, and the Príncipe Felipe Auditorium in Oviedo, among others. Internationally, they have performed at the Avignon Festival, the La Bâtie Festival in Geneva, and in Paris, London, Sofia, Moscow, Mexico City, Havana, Santo Domingo, Dublin, and Bremen, among other venues.
Its first director and founder was Juan José Olives, who held the position of principal and artistic director until his death at the end of 2018. Since 2021, Asier Puga has been the new principal and artistic director. The ensemble has also collaborated with other guest conductors such as Irvine Arditti, Miguel Romea, Sandro Gorli, José Luis Temes, José María Sánchez-Verdú, and Klaus Simon, among others. They have performed with soloists and groups such as La Ribot, Niño de Elche, Ensemble l'Itinéraire, Asier Polo, Carmen Linares, Coro Amici Musicae, Los Titiriteros de Binefar, and Ananda Sukarlan, to name a few.
Their interest in supporting new generations of musicians and creators has been reinforced in recent years with the creation of the “Juan José Olives” Young Composers Competition, the Enigma Platform, intended to invite a young chamber group to participate in the Grupo Enigma season, as well as the Proyecto Pórtico, the recording, publishing and dissemination platform for contemporary music, one of the most complete libraries of contemporary Spanish music in Spain.
The work of the Grupo Enigma in the field of recording has been varied, making a collection of monographic recordings (some already reference) of Joaquim Homs, Paul Hindemith, Ángel Oliver and Luciano Berio; as well as another dedicated to Aragonese musical creation and to the Mass No. 6 in Eb by Franz Schubert.
Previous Seasons
SOBRE LA POSIBILIDAD DE UNA ISLA
“What beings exist on the deserted island? The only answer is that man already exists there, but a strange man, absolutely separate, absolutely creative, ultimately an Idea of man, a prototype, a man who would be almost a god, a woman who would be almost a goddess, a great Amnesiac, a pure Artist
Awareness of the land and the ocean, that is the deserted island, ready to restart the world.”
Causes and Reasons for Desert Islands, Gilles Deleuze
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SOBRE LA POSIBILIDAD DE LO SALVAJE
In the last interview Pasolini gave before his brutal murder, he stated, “I think that to scandalize is a right; to be scandalized, a pleasure.” Words that clash sharply with the increasingly puritanical and self-indulgent society in which we live.
This season is unified and structured through the word. From the sung word to the written word; including the narrated, filmed, shouted, and recorded. Agonizing, ironic, sensual, nocturnal, sick, revolutionary, sexual, alcoholic, ghostly, or violent voices. All voices have a voice, and all of them come together this season to summon, like a modern primitive ritual, the possibility of the wild.
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SOBRE LO QUE NO SE VE
A musical group with a contemporary spirit should be a compass. A tool not intended to point in the right direction, but a means to suggest new paths through our musical and cultural genealogy.
I believe that programming with this aim must strive to stir consciences. To champion curiosity, the search for meaning. To support the generosity of those artists who have dared to subvert their present to show us that others are possible. To be accomplices, ultimately, of the invisible.
A program that looks and sounds in many directions, but with a clear destination: what is not seen.
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Enigma 30 years
SURREALISMO. Arte, utopía y revolución
This season is a look at those authors, artistic movements, and eras that maintained and continue to maintain that agitational essence described and emanating from the manifesto. As Breton said: "It will be up to the anger and innocence of certain men yet to come to extract from Surrealism what must remain alive, and restore it, at the price of a good plunder, to its own objectives."
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A new season to celebrate 30 years of uninterrupted activity, but also a program that is a celebration of imagination, of difference, of that poetry that overflows in a multitude of forms and directions.
5 concerts at the Zaragoza Auditorium and various off-season activities; 4 Spanish premieres and 1 world premiere; expansive programs ranging from instrumental music to electronic music, including video, performance, poetry, and the beginnings of cinema
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