To describe Ensemble Vortex as “whirlwind” is a useful pleonasm, because it emphasizes the extreme concentric mobility of an enterprising team of young performers and composers, all of whom have been trained in the majority of approved musical practices, in the service of a sustained policy of creation. As a result, Vortex has an ever-expanding repertoire: over a hundred works commissioned and premiered to date. At the source of this innovative effervescence was the 2005 reunion of a dozen young musicians from Switzerland, Europe and Latin America, all graduates of Geneva’s Haute Ecole de Musique, in particular the composition class of Eric Gaudibert, whose intense and generous personality accompanied the adventurous growth of Vortex until his own death in 2012.

By honing its mastery of current modes of writing and producing music, including digital and electroacoustic technology, Vortex has confirmed its original commitment to stylistic openness. The ensemble is encouraged by the individual or collective collaboration of its members with other ensembles and forms of expression: improvisation, jazz, ethnomusic, dance, theatre, installations, radio, etc. Several Vortex members have skills in the visual arts, and a persistent interest in multimedia experimentation stimulates this desire to vary the musical gesture and broaden its applications.

Such an approach, methodically pursued, is clearly the result of the general evolution of artistic action. From event to event, it allows Vortex to diversify its points of reference, to emulate others, and to create and renew opportunities for active convergence with potential partners, both musicians and non-musicians. Guest soloists and groups contribute to the density of concerts, especially in Geneva where, in the course of seasons that are often broadcast, the ensemble regularly takes part in the spring events of the Archipel festival. But it also performs in other centers of cultural activity in Switzerland and in countries near and far: from Lausanne to Basel, Bern and Bordeaux, from La Rochelle to Melbourne, from Brisbane to Lisbon and Saint Petersburg, from Amsterdam to Buenos Aires.