OpenICE 2016, presented in collaboration with Abrons Arts Center, is a program designed to bring every aspect of ICE's artist-curated and ensemble-commissioned music-making—performances, commissions, videos, workshops, hands-on educational activities, blogs, and community gatherings, as well as ICE’s work behind the scenes—out into the open for the benefit of new audiences, and all for free. 

This performance of the threshing floor — a 20-minute work for amplified tenor saxophone, amplified percussion, and electronics completed in 2014 — marks ICE’s first performance of music by UK-based Costa Rican composer Mauricio Pauly. The work is Pauly’s statement piece—ambient and linear at the same time, embracing the listener in an utterly beautiful sound world with distant sightings of noise, trash, and drones. The sounds of two familiar instruments are amplified and sent though guitar pedals, nearly unrecognizable by the time they reach audience ears. The saxophonist brings on amplification feedback through the placement of a microphone aimed at instrument’s bell and, as the percussionist controls the ebb and flow of feedback by bringing the microphone close to different areas of a drum’s skin, the listeners—completely enveloped within a ring a speakers—can almost feel the embrace of the sound on their own skin.  ICE dream team Claire Chase (flute), Ryan Muncy (saxophone), Ross Karre (percussion), and Levy Lorenzo (electronics) bring the work to life. 

Mauricio Pauly: the threshing floor (2015) for percussion, tenor sax and electronics

Marcos Balter: Strohbass (2012) for baritone sax and bass flute

Marcos Balter: Alone (2014) for solo flute

Nathan Davis: Limn (2015) for contrabass flute and electronics

Nathan Davis: Cipher (2012) for baritone sax and electronics NYC PREMIERE

OpenICE New York is made possible through lead support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Howard Gilman Foundation, alongside generous support from the French American Cultural Exchange (FACE Foundation), New Music USA, the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Paul R. Judy Center for Applied Research at the Eastman School of Music, the National Endowment for the Arts, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for ICE.