The Guggenheim and Rome Prize-winning composer, performer, and installation artist Miya Masaoka creates and shares new sounds, sometimes from her own recording inside an object, a plant, or the human body. This Portrait showcases her exploration of the natural world and the bodily perception of vibration, movement, and time, with a world-premiere commission for International Contemporary Ensemble, alongside three recent works that illuminate her consistently innovative artistic practice.
PROGRAM
Miya Masaoka: The Dust and the Noise (2013, rev 2021)
for piano, violin, cello, and percussion
Miya Masaoka: The Horizon Leans Forward (2023)
for for string quartet
Miya Masaoka: Into the Landscape of the Shaking Chôra (2025, World Premiere)
for flute, clarinet, french horn, piano, string quintet, percussion, and electronics
Miya Masaoka: Mapping a Joyful Noise (2022)
for violin solo and electronics
PERFORMERS
Vimbayi Kaziboni, conductor
Isabel Lepanto Gleicher, flute
Emmalie Tello, flute
Nicolee Kuester, horn
Erika Dohi, piano
Nathan Davis, percussion
Modney, violin
Gabriela Diaz, violin
Kyle Armbrust, viola
Michael Nicolas, cello
Randall Zigler, bass
Miya Masaoka is a Guggenheim and Rome Prize-winning composer, performer, and installation artist. Her work explores the natural world, bodily perception of vibration, movement and time while foregrounding complex timbre relationships. In 2018 she joined the Columbia University Visual Arts Department as an Associate Professor, where she is the director of the Sound Art Program, a joint program with the Computer Music Center. A 2019 Studio Artist for the Park Avenue Armory, Masaoka has also received the Doris Duke Artist Award in 2013, a Fulbright, and an Alpert Award. Her work has been presented at the Venice Biennale, MoMA PS1, Kunstmuseum Bonn, and the Park Avenue Armory. She has been commissioned by and collaborated with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Glasgow Choir, International Contemporary Ensemble (Ensemble Evolution), Bang on a Can, Jack Quartet, Del Sol, MIVOS, Momenta and the S.E.M. Ensemble, and an outdoor installation at the Caramoor, Katonah, New York and at Governors Island. She is a polyglot, and speaks six languages.
INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY 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. Co-founded in 2001 by flutist and MacArthur “genius” Fellow Claire Chase, the Ensemble has premiered over 1,000 works. The Ensemble has given performances at Warsaw Autumn, TIME:SPANS, Berliner Festspiele, HEAR NOW Los Angeles, Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, Ojai Music Festival, and Big Ears Festival as well as in venues such as the Dutch National Opera, Cité de la Musique (Paris), Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, Japan Society, Merkin Hall at the Kaufman Music Center, Fridman Gallery, Chelsea Factory, NYU Skirball and Walt Disney Concert Hall.
CREDITS
The International Contemporary Ensemble’s performances and commissioning activities during the 2024-25 concert season are made possible by the generous support of our board of directors, many individuals, as well as the Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Robert D. Bielecki Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, The Arlene and Larry Dunn Fund for Afrodiasporic Music, Fromm Music Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Amphion Foundation, 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.