Proton Ensemble Bern

Founded in Bern in 2010 by members of the Ensemble Boswil; the Ensemble Proton Bern is devoted to new music and works with a fixed core line-up. Since 2011 it has been ensemble in residence at the Dampfzentrale Bern. Christian Henking was artistic adviser from 2010 to 2014, Matthias Kuhn conducted the ensemble until the end of 2019; since then the collective has taken the artistic and strategic decisions together. The instruments include rare ones such as the contrabass clarinet, the lupophon and the contraforte, together with the Stroh violin and the electric cello. In the series “protonwerk” the ensemble awards composition commissions each year to young composers and gives the works their first performance there; alongside this it tries out new concert formats. It has worked with Beat Furrer, Samuel Andreyev, Thomas Kessler, Catherine Lamb and Annette Schmucki; its concerts are recorded by Radio SRF 2 Kultur. Appearances have taken it through Switzerland and to Germany, France, Austria, the Balkans, the west coast of the USA and Kyiv.