Founded in 2016 in St. Petersburg, {instead} ensemble is active in various facets of contemporary music.

The ensemble mainly explores three directions of musical activity: discovering and performing new music; compositions of mostly late 20th century (historical direction); collective improvisation. Our line-up is flexible to reflect the ideology of a given project., featuring musicians of various backgrounds (contemporary classical&experimental music, improvisation, live art performance etc.), which in turn influences the repertoire.

We have participated in concerts within the SoundArtLab project of the Baltic branch of State Contemporary Art Centre, the Fifth International St. Petersburg Cultural Forum, Musical Evenings at the Academy of Art, Sound Around Kaliningrad.

The ensemble has performed at various venues in St.Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Minsk, Moscow, Gdansk, and Hamburg, together with musicians such as Danil Akimov, Yaroslav Zemlyansky, Vladimir Kanatchikov, Darya Ponomareva, and joined the St. Petersburg Improvisers Orchestra to perform Spatial Composition № 3 by Vladimir Gorlinsky.

The composers whose works have been premiered by {instead} ensemble include Anatoly Korolev, Daniil Pilchen, Svetlana Lavrova, Artur Zobnin, Ivan Abramov, Elina Lebedze, Dmitry Timofeev, Elizaveta Akbalkan, Alexandra Korableva, Oleg Gudachev, Natalia Solovieva, and Dmitry Shchukin.

b. 1989. Nikita Vasilenko is a sonic artist and musician, who is primarily focused performance, installation and multichannel setups. 
NV works explore the tensions between programmable material and potentials for its failure by using mixed media techniques.
Nikita Vasilenko also makes music for films, theatre, and performs audio restoration.

Valery Posidelov - russian journalist, writer, poet and rock musician, guitar player and noise maker, leader of underground post-punk band 'T!NN!' ('TAM! NET NICHEGO!' or 'There is Nothing').

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Валерий Посиделов - легендарный российский музыкант, поэт, писатель и журналист. Фронтмен первой в городе Ростове-на-Дону рок-группы ДЕНЬ И ВЕЧЕР (1979-87гг.), создатель злобной, дворовой электрик-пост-панк бригады ТАМ! НЕТ НИЧЕГО! (с 1987г и по сей день.), которая в свое время объездила все возможные и невозможные советские и близзарубежные фестивали и которая долгое время в одиночестве представляла ростовскую рок-музыку. Лидер параллельных групп НОВЫЕ КОМСОМОЛЬЦЫ и СКАЗОЧНИК В ЗАКОНЕ (вместе c Дмитрием Христиановым). Посиделов (вместе с женой Галиной Пиллипенко) был редактором самиздатовского журнала "УРА. БУМ БУМ!", написал несколько художественно-публицистических книжек (одна из них - "Магия рок-музыки"), снимал клипы, писал музыку для спектаклей и кино (например молодому, никому в 90-е годы не известному режиссеру Кирилу Серебренникову).

Experimental electronics artist from Moscow, Russia.

Dmitry Burtsev (b. 1992, Moscow, Russia), composer, sound artist, improviser. 

His current artistic research is primarily focused on human perception of sound both within and outside of a musical context in relation to affect theory. Dmitry explores the sonic environment of human habitation through the field recordings and transforms the latter into his music pieces. Another point of his musical interests lies in spoken word and language as the point of departure for a musical thought, which is at the same time influenced by years of accordion practice and free improvisation. Through an ongoing contemplation on memory and  the process of forgetting, Dmitry reflects on the European and non-European tradition in music history in search to understand the present reality through compositional tools and musical discourse.

Dmitry studied composition at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory with professor V.G.Tarnopolsky, from where he graduated in 2017. Additional studies include master classes with Oscar Bianchi, Fabien Levy, and Carola Bauckholt at the International Composers Academy in Tchaikovsky city in Russia in 2016. Since 2017, Burtsev has taken on the role of assistant of the composer Sergei Newski, which provided Dmitry with invaluable experience and advanced his professional skills.

Dmitry’s music was performed by various professional ensembles and performers, such as: Studio for New Music, Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble (MCME), ensemble Kymatik, L.G.Zykina State Ensemble of Russian Folk Instruments, Pavlos Antoniadis, Sergei Tchirkov, Natalia Pshenichnikova and others. 

Since 2017 Burtsev starts writing music for theatres, such as Moscow Chekhov Art Theater, Moscow Academic Theatre of Vladimir Mayakovsky, Norilsk Polar Drama Theatre and others.

In 2017, he won the Open Space competition at the Museum of Cosmonautics, where he got a chance to collaborate with the Zykina State Ensemble of Russian Folk Instruments. In 2020, he became a laureate of the Russian Music 2.0 program and wrote the piece Revisité for MCME.

Dmitry is also the author of interdisciplinary musical performances, in which he brings together performing arts, free improvisation, collage combinations of contemporary art- and popular music and field recordings. Most of these performances resulted from a collaboration with the Vadim Sidur Museum (Moscow).

In 2022 Dmitry left Russia and currently is based in Tbilisi, Georgia

In 2024, Dmitry started a master's program at Robert Schumann University in Düsseldorf under the supervision of Professor José María Sánchez-Verdu.

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