What does the typical contemporary music ensemble look like? I haven’t been able to find an answer to this question, so I decided to make my own enquiry.

There seems to be three categories: Larger ensembles, typically in the format of sinfoniettas. Ensembles in traditional formats, ie. string quartets, wind quintets, etc. And then: ecclectic, new, experimental formats. I have noticed, that when there are call for scores, it seems as if the formats available are most often within the 3rd category.

I decided to make a small investigation into the question, narrowing my research, so I looked for ensembles within the 3rd category, with these conditions:

• the ensemble must be active now, 2022
• they must be playing composed music (not excluding ensembles also doing other formats)
• consisting of from 3 to 10 players
• playing acoustic instruments, although ensembles also including electronics were also ok

I gathered info in a google sheet, and here is the result:

1. I found (sofar) 18 ensembles
2. They are based in Argentina Australia Denmark Finland France Germany Irland Italy Serbia UK USA
3. They have between 8 and 3 members

What instruments are they playing?

All in all, these instruments were used: Voice Recorder Flute Obo Saxophone Clarinet Bassoon Trumpet Trombone Guitar Harp Accordeon Piano Percussion Violin Viola Cello Double Bass Electronics

What is the most frequently used instruments?

1	Piano	79%
2	Clarinet	74%
3	Flute	68%
4	Cello	68%
5	Violin	58%
6	Percussion	53%
7	Voice	26%
8	Viola	26%
9	Obo	21%
10	Double Bass	21%
11	Electronics	16%
12	Bassoon	11%
13	Guitar	11%
14	Accordeon	11%
15	Recorder	5%
16	Saxophone	5%
17	Trumpet	5%
18	Trombone	5%
19	Harp	5%

Since the average size of these ensembles were 6 players, I found it useful to look at the six most frequently used instruments, marked in bold above, and these are: Piano, Clarinet, Flute, Cello, Violin, Percussion.

What my mini-research has shown, so far, is that the typical ensemble playing contemporary music is a sextet with the so-called Pierrot ensemble with an added percussion player.

Here is the list of ensembles:

Name	WWW	Country
Aleph	France	France
Scenatet	https://www.scenatet.dk/portfolio/	Denmark
Figura		Denmark
Uuisinta Ensemble	http://www.uusintaensemble.fi/about.html	Finland
Concorde	http://homepage.eircom.net/~concorde/index.html	Irland
Da capo	https://www.dacapochamberplayers.org/the-musicians	USA
Dynamis Ensemble	https://www.dynamisensemble.it/page1.html	Italy
Eighth Blacbird	https://www.eighthblackbird.org/sextetmusicians	USA
Ensemble Kaparilo		Argentina
Ensemble Recherche		Germany
Ensemble Sortisatio	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensemble_Sortisatio	Germany
Ensemble Studio6	http://www.studio6.st/ensemble.html	Serbia
The New York New Music Ensemble	https://www.nynme.org/home	USA
Psappha	https://www.psappha.com/about-us/	UK
relache	https://www.relache.org/musicians	USA
Sentieri selvaggi	http://sentieriselvaggi.org/il-progetto/	Italy
Sond’arte	https://www.sondarte.com/repertoire-main	Italy
Topology	https://topologymusic.com/who-is-topology/	Australia

Information

I based my search mostly in this “List of contemporary classical ensembles” (wikipedia). It is of course rather incomplete, and many of the listed ensembles are historical. What I find curious is that I had such a hard time finding information on these things online. It is really difficult for me to find updated databases on the current ensembles, and for that matter, festivals, calls for scores, and so on. In short: Information about the contemporary music scene seems to be really scarce.

This leads of course to my typical last words: Help! If you have information about good, updated ressources for contemporary music, composers, festivals, musicians and so on. If you know about more ensembles to include in my enquiry. And, of course, if you know about real, maybe even academic, enquiries into these questions: Help!