El Cimarrón with the El Cimarrón Ensemble

Foundation

Mission and activities of the Hans Werner Henze Foundation

El Cimarrón, Dresden 2012 — *© Matthias Creutziger*

The group came together in March 1999 to rehearse the work as part of the Young Culture organization in Hallein and spontaneously chose its name after the piece by Hans Werner Henze.

By the time of the composer's death in October 2012, the ensemble had given around 30 performances and one CD production of the work. In May 1999, it had the opportunity to hold a rehearsal with the composer for several hours.
On 1 July 2011, the ensemble gave a guest performance in the courtyard of the Renaissance monastery in Marino as part of a small music festival held in Castelgandolfo, Marino and in the maestro's villa in honour of Henze's 85th birthday.
In the 2012/13 season, Henze was Capell-Compositeur of the Staatskapelle Dresden, and the Semperoper placed a Henze focus on its programme with a new production of We Come to the River, a revival of Gisela! and a performance by the El Cimarrón ensemble.

Over the years, the ensemble has built up a small repertoire of pieces that it has commissioned itself, including works by Luca Lombardi, Stefano Taglietti, Vito Palumbo, Stefan Hakenberg and Jack Fortner.
The El Cimarrón ensemble has performed this repertoire in many cities in Austria, Italy, Germany, Poland, France, the USA, Slovakia and Switzerland.

Even after Henze's death, the group still enjoys performing El Cimarrón, for example at the Gaida Festival in Vilnius (Lithuania) in 2013, at the Acht-BrückenFestival in Cologne and at the Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte in Montepulciano in 2015, at the E-Werk in Erlangen in 2016, at the Flora in Gelsenkirchen in 2018 and at the Orff Institute in Salzburg in 2019.

The composition of the members has changed several times; Christina Schorn-Mancinelli (guitar), Ivan Mancinelli (percussion) and Michael Kerstan (Hans Werner Henze Foundation, director) have been part of the ensemble from the very beginning. Baritone Robert Koller joined the ensemble in 2007 and flautist David Gruber in 2008.