Photo Credits: Courtney Bryan (pc: Taylor Hunter), Adegoke Steve Colson (pc: Sharon Sullivan), Brittany Green (pc: Shanita Dixon), Wendell Logan (pc: Kevin G. Reeves)
COMPOSING WHILE BLACK
VOLUME ONE, TWO WORLD PREMIERES by Courtney Bryan and Adegoke Steve Colson
The Ensemble is thrilled to present a program of chamber music featuring world premieres by 2023 MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient and Rome Prize winner Courtney Bryan, commissioned by Arlene and Larry Dunn, and Grammy nominee and decorated longtime member of the famed Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians Adegoke Steve Colson, commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation. Conducted by Vimbayi Kaziboni, one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary classical music of his generation, this program reveals the new Afromodernism as an intercultural, multigenerational space of innovation.
PROGRAM
Brittany J. Green – Thread and Pull (2022)
Adegoke Steve Colson – MIRRORS (2023, World Premiere)
Wendell Logan – Runagate, Runagate (1989)
Courtney Bryan – DREAMING (Freedom Sounds) (2023, World Premiere)
PERFORMERS
Vimbayi Kaziboni, conductor
Alice Teyssier, voice
Fay Victor, voice
Tariq Al-Sabir, tenor
Damian Norfleet, voice
Laura Cocks, flute/piccolo
Kemp Jernigan, oboe
Sara Schoenbeck, bassoon
Joshua Rubin, clarinets
Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet
Jacob Greenberg, piano
Ross Karre, percussion
Gabriela Díaz, violin
Marina Kifferstein, violin
Wendy Richman, viola
Clare Monfredo, cello
Randall Zigler, double bass
About the composers
Courtney Bryan, a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, is “a pianist and composer of panoramic interests” (New York Times). She is currently the composer-in-residence with Opera Philadelphia.
Byran’s compositions have been performed by the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra (Creative Partner, 2020-2023), Jacksonville Symphony (Mary Carr Patton Composer-In-Presidence, 2018-2020), New York Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, LA Phil, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Chicago Sinfonietta, and London Sinfonietta in a wide range of renowned venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and Blue Note Jazz Club.
Recent accolades include the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (2018), Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition (2019-2020), United States Artists Fellowship (2020), and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship (2020-2021). She is the Albert and Linda Mitz Professor of Music at Newcomb College in the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University
Adegoke Steve Colson - decorated pianist, composer, historian, educator - has written over 200 pieces for small ensemble, several of which are performed and have been recorded by other artists, He has also received several commissions for large works. His work can be heard on labels such as ECM, Columbia/Sony,Black Saint and Silver Sphinx - a label co-owned with his wife Iqua. Select innovators on his projects include musicians Reggie Workman, Henry Threadgill, Anthony Davis, Andrew Cyrille, and Tyshawn Sorey; poet/activists Amiri and Amina Baraka, dancer Carmen de Lavallade, and playwright/screenwriter Richard Wesley. Commissions include scoring and conducting the music of piano stride master Willie “The Lion” Smith for the National Lost Jazz Shrines project, and a tribute premiered at New Jersey Performing Arts Center for two pianos, septet and choir celebrating the 350th Anniversary of Newark, NJ. – the third oldest city in the U.S. Recent premieres; Incandescence ( 2021) commissioned by American Composers Forum, and Suite Harlem (2022), part of a South Arts Initiative supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
A New Jersey native, Colson spent time in Chicago joining the influential Association for Advancement of Creative Musicians in 1971 before graduating from the Northwestern University School of Music. He was inducted into the East Orange Hall of Fame in 2018, joining fellow hometown musicians Dionne Warwick, Naughty by Nature and Whitney Houston. Colson continues to teach in Bloomfield College’s Creative Arts Technology Department - an initiative he helped launch 35 years ago - and is currently completing a book, “Thoughts for a New Discussion of History”.
Brittany J. Green is a North Carolina-based composer, creative, and educator. Her music facilitates intimate musical spaces that ignite visceral responses at the intersection of sound, video, movement, and text. Recent works engage sonification and black feminist theory as tools for sonic world-building, exploring the construction, displacement, and rupture of systems. Her artistic practice includes spoken and electronic performance, interdisciplinary collaboration, experiential projects, and acoustic and electroacoustic chamber and large ensemble works. Her music has been featured at NYC Electronic Music Festival, WoCo Fest, and Experimental Sound Studio. Her collaborators include the International Contemporary Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Transient Canvas, Castle of our Skins, Emory University Symphony Orchestra, and Wachovia Winds. Brittany holds awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP Foundation, and New Music USA. She is a doctoral candidate at Duke University, pursuing a PhD in music composition as a Dean’s Graduate Fellow.
Wendell Logan was a composer and jazz musician born and raised in Thomson, Georgia. In 1962, Logan graduated from Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in music, in 1964 he graduated from Southern Illinois University with a Masters in music, and in 1968 he graduated from University of Iowa with a Ph.D. in music theory and composition. From a young age, Logan was taught to play the saxophone by his father. Along with playing the saxophone he also played the trumpet. Wendell Logn began working at Oberlin Conservatory of Music and founded the jazz department and was the director of African American music and jazz studies. During his time at Oberlin, Logan was able to create jazz studies into a major instead of it just being a hobby.
His work has been recorded on Orion, Golden Crest, University of Michigan Press, Morehouse College Press and RPM labels, among others.
He composed more than 200 works that have been performed on three continents including Europe, Africa, and the Carribeans. n 2001, Logan’s large, operatic composition, Doxology Opera: The Doxy Canticles, premiered in Chicago. His influences include euro-American classical, jazz, blues and African American church music.
INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ENSEMBLE
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 35 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.
Described as “America’s foremost new-music group” (The New Yorker), the Ensemble has become a leading force in new music throughout the last 20 years, having premiered over 1,000 works and having been a vehicle for the workshop and performance of thousands of works by student composers across the U.S. The Ensemble’s composer-collaborators—many who were unknown at the time of their first Ensemble collaboration—have fundamentally shaped its creative ethos and have continued to highly visible and influential careers, including MacArthur Fellow Tyshawn Sorey; long-time Ensemble collaborator, founding member, and 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winner Du Yun; and the Ensemble’s founder, 2012 MacArthur Fellow, and first-ever flutist to win Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Prize, Claire Chase.
CREDITS
Courtney Bryan's DREAMING (Freedom Sounds) is commissioned by Arlene and Larry Dunn in honor of their 50th wedding anniversary.
Adegoke Steve Colson's MIRRORS is commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation.
This performance is made possible, in part, due to support from the Fromm Music Foundation.
The International Contemporary Ensemble’s performances and commissioning activities during the 2023-24 concert season are made possible by the generous support of many individuals as well as the Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Amphion Foundation, The Cheswatyr Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Siemens Musikstiftung, New Music USA, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, BMI Foundation, as well as public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council for the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, and the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) from the U.S. Small Business Administration. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the International Contemporary Ensemble.