This event is a unique international collaboration between ICE and the Paris-based ensemble L'Itineraire, one of the world’s finest ensembles for contemporary music. The concert celebrates a new generation of Afrodiasporic composers from around the world. By presenting perspectives that have historically been missing from academic research, concert programs, and journalistic coverage, this program demonstrates the important role that Afrodiasporic new music is playing as an intercultural, multigenerational space of innovation that offers new subjects, histories, and identities.
There will be a pre-concert discussion with composers Alyssa Regent and Corie Rose Soumah, moderated by Dr. Harald Kisiedu, co-editor, Composing While Black: Afrodiasporic New Music Today. Following the concert, there wll be a reception and book-signing.
This program is a collaboration between International Contemporary Ensemble, the Columbia Paris Global Center, and the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, where ICE Artistic Director George Lewis is currently a Fellow.
This performance is made possible through lead support from the Arlene & Larry Dunn Fund for Afrodiasporic Music.
PROGRAM
Alyssa Regent: Émergence (2024)
Andile Khumalo: Schaufe[r]nster II (2014)
Corie Rose Soumah: Limpidités IV (2022)
Hannah Kendall: when flesh is pressed against the dark (2024)
Levy Lorenzo and Fay Victor: MODIFIED (2024)
Jessie Cox: (Noisy) Black/blackness (Unbounded) (2024)
PERFORMERS
International Contemporary Ensemble
Rebekah Heller, conductor
Joshua Rubin, clarinets
Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet
Fay Victor, voice
Levy Lorenzo, percussion and electronics
Jacob Greenberg, piano
in collaboration with L'Itinéraire
Yua Souverbie, flute
Mathilde Lauridon, violin
with guest artists
Damian Norfleet, voice
Weston Olencki, trombone
PARTICIPATING COMPOSERS
Alyssa Regent, Corie Rose Soumah, and Dr. Harald Kisiedu
BIOGRAPHIES
Alyssa Regent is a New York based composer originally from the islands of Guadeloupe. Her works have been performed at thethe Lucerne Music Festival (Switzerland), 77th Composer’s Conference, String Quartet Evolution at the Banff Center (Canada), and New Music on the Point. In 2023, she was awarded the Ascap Morton Gould Young Composer Award. Regent is inspired by what she calls “the unseen”, seeking to evoke passions and sensations that are deeply rooted in introspection. She harvests from the ethereal, the enigmatic intersections between music and spirituality. She loves to think about music as an exploration of the spiritual and emotional dimensions of the human experience. Her compositions urge listeners to reflect and embrace their emotions; connect with each other during a shared listening experience. Regent studied composition with Suzanne Farrin, David Fulmer, Marcos Balter and George Lewis and is currently pursuing a DMA at Columbia University.
Corie Rose Soumah is a Canadian composer based in New York, originally from Quebec. She specializes in creating fragmented and reconstructed sounds through hyper-collages and physical gestures, often incorporating Afro-diasporic perspectives. Her work blends various acoustic, electronic, and analog technologies. Soumah’s compositions have been performed by numerous ensembles, including Longleash and Hypercube, and featured at festivals like MATA and Domaine Forget. She has recent collaborations involving saxophones, electronics, and a commission for Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne for the 2025 Forum. Currently pursuing a DMA in composition at Columbia University, Soumah holds a BMus from the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, with mentorship from notable composers such as George Lewis and Zosha Di Castri.
Dr. Harald Kisiedu (moderator)is a historical musicologist and saxophonist who received his PhD in historical musicology from Columbia University. His research interests include Afrodiasporic classical and experimental composers, jazz as a global phenomenon, improvisation, music and politics, and Wagner. His writings have appeared in the WIRE, Grove Dictionary of American Music, Critical Studies in Improvisation, and Journal der Künste a. o. He has taught at the University of Music and Theatre “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” Leipzig and the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück’s Institute of Music. He is the co-editor of Composing While Black: Afrodiasporic New Music Today (Wolke-Verlag, 2023), and the author of European Echoes: Jazz Experimentalism in Germany, 1950-1975 (Wolke-Verlag, 2020).
L’ITINERAIRE
L’Itinéraire est l’un des principaux ensembles de musique de création en Europe. Depuis sa fondation en 1973, l’Itinéraire a contribué à l’émergence de la musique spectrale, basée sur l’écoute du son et représentée par les compositeurs Gérard Grisey, Michael Lévinas, Tristan Murail et Hugues Dufourt. Aujourd’hui dirigé par Lucia Peralta, l’Itinéraire s’appuie sur des solistes de très haut niveau dont les talents divers mixent les générations et les pratiques pour oser toutes les limites du son: saturation acoustique, électrification, espaces inouïs de l’électronique, mais aussi improvisation, concerts en plein-air, expérimentations sociétales. Ensemble de renommée internationale, il collabore régulièrement avec l’IRCAM-Centre Pompidou, Radio France, les CNCM, et s’est produit aux États-Unis, au Mexique, en Amérique du Sud, en Israël, au Japon et dans la plupart des pays d’Europe. Largement reconnu comme un lieu d’exploration et de création musicale, L’Itinéraire s’engage à travers trois axes principaux : la création et la diffusion des musiques d’aujourd’hui, la transmission des savoirs au travers d’actions culturelles et de programmes d’insertion professionnelle, ainsi que l’exploration de formats innovants tels que des performances en plein air et des projets in situ, en s’emparant de sujets de société essentiels, comme l’écologie.
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
This evening is made possible through the generous support of the Columbia Global Paris Center, Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Cornelia G. Bronson Fund in the Department of Music at Columbia University, and the Edwin H. Case Chair in American Music, Columbia University.
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.