Ensemble Modern is a chamber ensemble dedicated to the music of modern composers. Formed in 1980, the group is based in Frankfurt, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 and made up variously of about twenty members from numerous countries.

Ensemble Modern tours widely and has released many recordings, performing works by such composers as Charles Ives

Charles Ives

Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...

, Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...

, Kurt Weill

Kurt Weill

Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

, Edgard Varèse

Edgard Varèse

Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, , whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....

, Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

, Conlon Nancarrow

Conlon Nancarrow

Conlon Nancarrow was a United States-born composer who lived and worked in Mexico for most of his life. He became a Mexican citizen in 1955.Nancarrow is best remembered for the pieces he wrote for the player piano...

, Steve Reich

Steve Reich

Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...

, George Benjamin

George Benjamin (composer)

George William John Benjamin, CBE is a British composer of classical music. He is also a conductor, pianist and teacher....

, Friedrich Goldmann

Friedrich Goldmann

Friedrich Goldmann was a German composer and conductor.-Life:Born on 27 April 1941, in Siegmar-Schönau, Chemnitz, Goldmann’s music education began in 1951 when he joined the Dresdner Kreuzchor...

, Elliott Sharp

Elliott Sharp

Elliott Sharp is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer.A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released over eighty-five recordings ranging from blues, jazz, and orchestral music to noise, no wave rock,...

, Roberto Carnevale

Roberto Carnevale

Roberto Carnevale is an Italian composer, pianist and conductor.- Biography and career :Born in Catania, he started studying piano at the age of seven. He took a degree in Arts at the University of Catania and he attended the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena...

, Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...

, Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton is an American composer, saxophonist, clarinettist, flautist, pianist, and philosopher. Braxton has released well over 100 albums since the 1960s...

, Heiner Goebbels

Heiner Goebbels

Heiner Goebbels is a German composer, music director and professor at Justus-Liebig-University in Gießen and at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland....

, Harrison Birtwistle

Harrison Birtwistle

Sir Harrison Paul Birtwistle CH is a British contemporary composer.-Life:Birtwistle was born in Accrington, a mill town in Lancashire some 20 miles north of Manchester. His interest in music was encouraged by his mother, who bought him a clarinet when he was seven, and arranged for him to have...

, Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

, Hanspeter Kyburz

Hanspeter Kyburz

Hanspeter Kyburz is a contemporary Swiss composer of classical music, known for applying electronic music techniques to his productions....

, Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...

 and many others. The group is highly regarded for its ability to play difficult music with complex rhythms and tempi. In 2003 the group received an ECHO.

Recordings with/of Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...

 music:

• The Yellow Shark
  The Yellow Shark
  The Yellow Shark is an album of orchestral music by Frank Zappa, released in 1993. It features live recordings from the Ensemble Modern's 1992 performances of Zappa's compositions. It was the last Zappa album released before his death. Tom Waits has listed it as one of his favourite albums,...
  
  (recorded 1992, released 1993)
• Everything Is Healing Nicely
  Everything Is Healing Nicely
  EIHN is an album by Frank Zappa, posthumously released through the Zappa Family Trust in December 1999. It features recordings made with the Ensemble Modern in preparation for The Yellow Shark .-Track listing:...
  
  (recorded 1991, released 1999)
• Ensemble Modern Plays Frank Zappa: Greggery Peccary & Other Persuasions (2003)