Photo Credits: Mazz Swift (PC: Nisha Sondhe); Murat Çolak (PC: Zeynep Özkanca); Brittany J. Green (PC: Shanita Dixon); Tyshawn Sorey (PC: Hannah Price); Yaz Lancaster (PC: Felix Walworth); Akiko Yamane (PC: Ayano Sudo); Aliya Ultan (PC: Peter Gannushkin)
Join us on April 5th at Roulette Intermedium for a concert featuring the World Premiere of Mazz Swift's “MEMORY THREE: Wrestling Waters” and the NYC Premiere of Murat Çolak's “LAV (Death is Not Final)”, with works by Akiko Yamane, Brittany J. Green, Tyshawn Sorey, Yaz Lancaster, and Aliya Ultan.
PROGRAM INCLUDES
Akiko Yamane: ambiguous garnet colored fragments (2012)
Brittany J. Green: THREAD AND PULL (2022)
Tyshawn Sorey: For Harold Budd (2012)
Mazz Swift: MEMORY THREE: Wrestling Waters (2023) (World Premiere, an Ensemble commission)
Yaz Lancaster: Among Verticals (2018)
Aliya Ultan: Residuum (2022) – film screening (NYC Premiere)
Murat Çolak: LAV (Death is Not Final) (2020-2023) (NYC Premiere, an Ensemble commission)
Performers
Alice Teyssier, voice/flute
Isabel Lepanto Gleicher, flute
Erin Rogers, saxophone
Peter Evans, trumpet
Sara Schoenbeck, bassoon
Cory Smythe, piano
Vicky Chow, piano
Nathan Davis, percussion
Josh Modney, violin
Mazz Swift, violin
Kyle Armbrust, viola
Katinka Kleijn, cello
Murat Çolak, electronics
Nicholas Houfek, Lighting Designer
About the Composers
Mazz Swift
Mazz Swift is a composer, conductor, singer, bandleader, educator, and Juilliard-trained violinist, weaving classic African American musics, electronica, and mindfulness into their music. Improvisation is a throughline in their practice across genres and instrumental configurations, and can be found in most of their works. They are a 2019 Jerome Hill Fellow, and 2021 United States Artist Fellow. Works include commissions by the Los Angeles Philharmonic (2020), the Silkroad Ensemble (2021), and the Kronos Quartet (2022+2023).
Murat Çolak
A native of Asia Minor, Murat Çolak is a composer, producer, and audio engineer based in New York City. He writes what he calls “Dark World Music” - a dystopian sound-world that finds home in the spirituality and poise of Turkish art music, experimentalism of modern concert music, and hazy, hypnotic coils of dub techno and trance.
Murat has collaborated extensively with some of contemporary music's most prominent exponents, artists like Ensemble Dal Niente, International Contemporary Ensemble, Wet Ink, Distractfold, Vertixe Sonora, Ensemble Surplus, Meitar Ensemble, and Scenatet. His work has been presented and supported by the BBC Radio 3, New Music USA, the Yaddo Corporation, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Akademie Schloss Solitude, ISCM World New Music Days, MATA Festival, Frequency Series, and Sonic Matter among others.
Besides composing, Murat operates GERYON Sound - a boutique music production studio that serves a global clientele with a focus on bringing cutting-edge production visions into new and experimental music. He also runs GERYON Label, a progressive electronic music imprint whose roster hosts composers, programmers, and audio researchers with a deep passion for electronic dance music.
Murat received a DMA in composition from Boston University, and he holds an MA in music from Istanbul Technical. He’s taught composition and production at New England Conservatory, Montclair State University, Kaufman Music Center, and the New York Philharmonic. He is a regular visiting lecturer at Simon Fraser University School of Contemporary Arts, and has given talks and masterclasses at Harvard University, UC Berkeley, Columbia University, Pomona College, University of Baltimore, Kent State University, and others.
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
The International Contemporary Ensemble’s performances and commissioning activities during the 2022-23 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., MAP Fund, Mid Atlantic Arts, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Amphion Foundation, The Cheswatyr Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, New Music USA’s New Music Organizational Development Fund, 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.