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The Manhattan School of Music
Contemporary Ensemble TACTUS

The Manhattan School of Music Contemporary Ensemble TACTUS is dedicated to providing young performers and composers at the School with opportunities to study and perform works composed during our lifetime, to work directly with living composers, and to share knowledgeable performances of 20th/21st-century masterpieces.

Past seasons have included music by Giacinto Scelsi, Michael Gordon, Luciano Berio, George Rochberg, George Perle, Elliot Carter, Giampaolo Bracali, Steve Reich, Edgard Varèse, John Cage, Martin Bresnick, Frederic Rzewski, Nils Vigeland, David Noon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe. TACTUS also performs Manhattan School of Music student compositions and has an annual commissioning award.

TACTUS has been invited to play at Oberlin College, Princeton University, Queens College, and Cooper Union and recently was the ensemble for the American premiere of Michael Gordon and Bill Morrison’s multimedia event Decasia for ensemble and film.

In the 2006–2007 series, TACTUS presented four concerts at Manhattan School of Music. In addition, the ensemble will be guests at the Whitney Museum for a Steve Reich 70th birthday concert and appear on the Princeton Composers series at Princeton University.

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  Students performing in front of film screen.  


Members of TACTUS (above) performing Michael Gordon and Bill Morrison's Decasia for ensemble and film at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, September 2004.

“Ambitious . . . finely polished . . . spirited . . .”
— March 2005, Allan Kozinn,
The New York Times

“The deepest, grandest noise of the musical season so far . . .”
— September 2004, Alex Ross,
The New Yorker

“ . . . most school concerts don’t generate the sort of buzz that this one did.”
— February 2004,
The New York Sun