Education
Since its inception, ICE has mentored exciting young composers from all over the world. In Chicago and New York, ICE produced three large-scale festivals devoted to the ensemble’s Young Composers Project, which featured composers from four continents who have gone on to major careers. ICE has performed over four hundred world premieres, and has a special relationship with emerging composers in Mexico: ICE’s 2008 Trés Generaciones, which culminated in two self-produced festivals in the U.S. and Mexico and a forthcoming documentary film, set a new high standard for the group’s international engagement with young artists.
ICE was ensemble-in-residence at New York University from 2004-2008, and at Columbia College Chicago from 2003-2008. In the current season, ICE will conduct residencies for student composers at Columbia University, Brandeis University, Mount Holyoke College, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of California at San Diego. Past residencies have been hosted by Northwestern University, the North Carolina School for the Arts, CalArts, and the Conservatorio de las Rosas in Morelia, Mexico, among other institutions.
Also in the 2009-2010 season, ICE begins a partnership as ensemble-in-residence with Baruch College High School in Manhattan and PS 169 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where the ensemble will work with young people from nine years old to high school age. From instrumental lessons to group improvisation workshops, ICE brings its unique creative energy to working with kids. ICE uses teaching principles developed at the Walden School, the foremost summer program in the United States for pre-college composers. This approach, a dialogue-based process of musical discovery, drilling concepts, and creative composition, is a model that ICE applies to diverse classrooms. ICE also extends its teaching mission to New York City and Chicago public schools.
Child studying the score to George Crumb's Vox Balaenae
