ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ENSEMBLE (ICE)

With a commitment to cultivating a more curious and engaged society through music, the International Contemporary Ensemble – as a commissioner and performer at the highest level – amplifies creators whose work propels and challenges how music is made and experienced.

The Ensemble’s members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. Works by emerging composers have anchored the Ensemble’s programming since its founding in 2001, and the group’s recordings and digital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music’s present.

guiding principles & values

The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) strives to cultivate a mosaic musical ecosystem that honors the diversity of human experience and expression by commissioning, developing, and performing the works of living artists. The Ensemble is a collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators who are committed to creating collaborations built on equity, belonging, and cultural responsiveness. Now in its third decade, the Ensemble continues to build new digital and live collaborative environments that strengthen artist agency and musical connections around the world.

We at the International Contemporary Ensemble believe that as a collective committed to advancing experimental music, it is our responsibility to challenge our biases and practices around who performs, or has their works performed, on the world’s stages. We acknowledge that Western European classical music has excluded individuals based on wealth, race, sex, pedigree, background, gender-identity, disability, and sexual orientation. We are actively making changes to all entry points to our organization to ensure that Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color are represented throughout the organization and on the world’s stages, and that our operations and decision-making structures support building spaces of belonging for everyone involved in the process of developing new music.

More about the Ensemble

Now in its third decade, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is a multidisciplinary collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators committed to building and innovating collaborative environments in order to inspire audiences to reimagine how they experience contemporary music and sound. The Ensemble creates a mosaic musical ecosystem as “America’s foremost new-music group” (The New Yorker), honoring the diversity of human experience and expression by commissioning, developing, recording, and performing the works of living artists in “a mission worth following” (I Care If You Listen).

Co-founded in 2001 by flutist and MacArthur “genius” Fellow Claire Chase, the Ensemble has premiered over 1,000 works and is the recipient of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, as well as Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year Award. Past artistic leadership includes co-founder Claire Chase and Ensemble members Joshua Rubin, Rebekah Heller, and Ross Karre. Notable presenting partners have included Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, TIME:SPANS Festival, Roulette, and Miller Theatre. The Ensemble has given performances at Warsaw Autumn, Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, Cité de la Musique (Paris), Park Avenue Armory, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ojai Music Festival, and Big Ears Festival as well as in venues such as the Dutch National Opera, Carnegie Hall, and Walt Disney Concert Hall Stage.

Through trailblazing initiatives such as the Call for ____ Commission Program and Ensemble Evolution (in partnership with The New School’s College of Performing Arts), the Ensemble has had a major impact on the contemporary performance ecosystem in New York City, nationally, and internationally, by supporting the creativity of their composer-collaborators, as well as presenting workshops and performances for hundreds of student composers. Many of the Ensemble’s composer-collaborators have developed highly influential careers, such as Du Yun, who won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for the opera Angel’s Bone, which the Ensemble developed and premiered, and MacArthur Fellows Tyshawn Sorey and Courtney Bryan. 

The Ensemble’s Digitice platform provides high-quality video documentation for artist-collaborators, as well as public access to an archive of composers’ workshops and performances. In addition, the Ensemble continues to build space for inter-organization dialogue on equity, and has facilitated New Music Virtual Town Hall meetings for peer organizations and individual musicians to share resources, processes, and initiatives around funding.

Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the Ensemble. Read more at www.iceorg.org 

About Our Name and Acronym (ICE): 

After many months of consideration and consultation among our staff, ensemble members, supporters, and audience participants, we have decided to retain the name "International Contemporary Ensemble," as well as the acronym ICE.

We are sensitive to the concerns surrounding the troubling actions of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and acknowledge that the coincidental naming association between this agency and our Ensemble has troubled many, both inside and outside our organization. But our ICE is not at all connected with this agency. On the contrary, our values and mission align with antiracism, equity, and a commitment to uplifting the artistic community.

Our name and acronym have a profound history. Our acronym has long stood for our values and mission for an international contemporary community dedicated to inclusivity and creativity. 

Our name/acronym is an affirmative statement of our values and mission in opposition to any negative associations. We believe our name and acronym can serve as powerful symbols of our commitment to a diverse and inclusive international contemporary community. Together, let us redefine the possibilities of the field through our music, discourse, and unwavering dedication to our values and mission.

History of 990s can be found here: https://www.guidestar.org/profile/13-4192400