Joshua Rubin, clarinet
Cory Smythe, piano
Levy Lorenzo, electronics
Special guest: Jeremiah Cymerman

ICE presents the second release on TUNDRA, a new label devoted to new sounds from ICE's artist-members.

ICE clarinetist and Program Director Joshua Rubin's debut solo recording, There Never is No Light (TUN 002) features landmark works representing forty years of electronic exploration in contemporary music. The album highlights music by Suzanne Farrin and Olly Wilson, newly commissioned works by New York-based composer/performer Mario Diaz de Leon and Mexican composer Ignacio Baca Lobera, alongside world-premiere recordings of computer music pioneer Mario Davidovsky and a new electroacoustic work co-composed with pianist Cory Smythe.

In his notes for the album, Rubin unifies these works by their humanized use of technology toward musical ends. Using visual artist James Turrell's early experiments with light as an analog, Rubin poses that these composers' use electronics in their music in a way that cannot exist without the performer and the listener: "There is never not light nor sound in the natural environment, but great composers (and artists like Turrell) expertly use tools to capture and manipulate it, rescuing it from a place of ambient ambiguity. Making sound into music is distinctly human; it happens at the moment that sound needs the ear it reaches."

This CD release concert at Spectrum features live performances from the albums' featured artists, Joshua Rubin and Cory Smythe, with live electronics from Levy Lorenzo, and special guest performances.