Macclesfield Contemporary Ensemble
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Registered charity no 517554
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Macclesfield Contemporary Ensemble
Macclesfield Contemporary Ensemble is the newest member of the KEMS family. Following a workshop exploring ‘In C’ by Terry Riley (led by orchestral director Tony Houghton), the KEMS Minimalists group was formed. This group, now renamed Macclesfield Contemporary Ensemble, has branched out into exploring other small-scale contemporary and experimental music which requires flexible instrumentation and varying numbers of performers.
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Macclesfield Contemporary Ensemble Leader Julia Harding looks back on the 2022-23 season

This year we got back into a more regular routine of rehearsals, meeting on Sunday aſternoons every couple of months. When we are at full strength, the group is a now little too large to accommodate at Lorna Green’s house (thanks to Lorna for her hospitality) so we have moved rehearsals to the small meeting space at St Peter’s and share the cost of room hire between the attendees. Membership has been stable, and we’ve also welcomed two new members – Sarah Ledbury and Adam Lewin.

We’ve identified a few pieces to focus on – including Mechanik, Three-Way Piece and Loose Canon. The aim is to present these in a workshop/concert next March as part of the biennial Festival of Contemporary Music run by Contemporary Music for All (CoMA) at a venue (tbc) in Macclesfield.


Membership of the group is open to anyone – we meet on Sunday afternoons (usually) every 6-8 weeks apart -you’ll need to be able to read conventional notation and play an instrument. However, instrumental parts are often of varying difficulty, so you don’t need to be an expert player.