Dear audience, welcome to SEZ’s “Concert”! Given the customary compactness and coherence of our performances, we kindly ask you not to applaud between the pieces, so as to preserve the conceptual continuity of the programme. After the concert, we warmly invite you to join us in the foyer, where there will also be a short conversation with the artists.

This seemingly simple situation at this year’s SEZ concert becomes the backbone of the proceedings – the point of departure for its musical and dramaturgical development. The structure is inspired by Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style, as the members of SEZ, together with actress Luna Pilić, explore the roles of performers, composers, audience members, critics, technical staff, and the institutional framework of the concert itself, from a series of different perspectives. Music appears at times as a commentary, then as a response, an illustration, or as an intermezzo in its own right, while the boundary between speech and performance becomes deliberately unstable.

By turning a story into an active event, we open up the possibility of experiencing many different concerts within one, or of seeing the same concert through different eyes. As is generally the case with us, musically speaking, we expect the unexpected – old music, new music, improvisations, non-music, and so on. In this format, the “Concert” by Serious Ensemble becomes precisely what it is – a concert – while at the same time being quite anything but one.

Your Serious Ensemble Zagreb