Photo Credits: Emily Howard (PC: Chris McAndrew), Robert Laidlow (PC: Jonathan Slater), Megan Steinberg (PC: Sam Walton), Bofan Ma (PC: Lu Liu), Zakiya Leeming (PC: David John), Sam Salem (PC: Self Portrait), Hongshuo Fan (PC: Lina Yan), and David De Roure (PC: Sally-Anne Stewart)
The six world premieres on this concert are the fruit of a collaboration between the International Contemporary Ensemble and the Center for Practice and Research in Science and Music (PRiSM) at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK. PRiSM founder-director and composer Emily Howard curates a program of new works for ensemble by UK-based composers Sam Salem, Robert Laidlow, Zakiya Leeming, Bofan Ma, Megan Steinberg, and Howard herself. The works utilize PRiSM’s wide range of experimental tools for generating music via artificial intelligence techniques, as well as new machine listening software for real-time gesture recognition and classification, developed by PRiSM researchers Hongshuo Fan and David De Roure, University of Oxford computer scientist, mathematician, musician, and PRiSM’s Technical Director.
PROGRAM
An evening of new works by:
Emily Howard: Ligament (2024, World Premiere)
Sam Salem: Of Darkness I (2024, World Premiere)
Bofan Ma: again, upon the bench of solace (2024, World Premiere)
Megan Steinberg: Hardcore Prelude (2024, World Premiere)
Zakiya Leeming: It’s the Algorithm (2024, World Premiere)
Robert Laidlow: Tui (2024, World Premiere)
PERFORMERS
Vimbayi Kaziboni, conductor
Alice Teyssier, voice
Fay Victor, voice
Josh Modney, violin
Mariel Roberts, cello
Isabel Lepanto Gleicher, flute
Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet
Dan Lippel, guitar
Greg Chudzik, bass
Nathan Davis, percussion
Levy Lorenzo, percussion and electronics
Ross Karre, electronics operator
Nicholas Houfek, lighting designer
Content Notice: Of Darkness I deals with themes of violence and death, explicitly in relation to Gaza. The video included does not include graphic representation of these themes, however, the piece overall may be challenging from both an emotional and sensory perspective.
PRiSM
Founded in 2017, PRiSM has become one of the leading world centers for research in artificial intelligence and music. The Center brings together researchers across the creative arts and the sciences with a view to making a real contribution to society by developing new digital technology and creative practice that address fundamental questions about what it means to be human and creative today. Uniquely positioned within a music conservatoire environment, PRiSM creates world premieres, from small chamber works and sound installations to large-scale orchestral works, created using such AI tools as the widely used PRiSM SampleRNN, an open-source software for neural audio synthesis, as well as techniques for automatic musical gesture recognition and score and text generation. PRiSM’s annual Future Music Festival has featured by the BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times and more.
The list of PRiSM collaborators includes New Scientist, Manchester Science Festival, BBC Philharmonic, Barbican Centre, The University of Oxford, nonclassical, NMC Recordings, Riot Ensemble, Distractfold, BCMG, Contemporary Music for All (CoMA) Manchester, The National Archives, ANU Productions and The Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Warburg Institute, The Santa Fe Institute’s Music as Complex Adaptive Systems Working Group, The University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute and NOVARS Research Centre, and AHRC Research Network. Other important initiatives include the Oxford Vaccine Group, and the Lucy Hale Festival, focused on Disability and AI.
The founding directors of PRiSM are composer Emily Howard (Professor of Composition, RNCM) and mathematician Marcus du Sautoy (Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics, University of Oxford). They are joined by computer scientist David De Roure (Professor of e-Research, University of Oxford and Turing Fellow, The Alan Turing Institute) and composer Sam Salem (PRiSM Senior Lecturer in Composition).
INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ENSEMBLE
Now in its third decade, the International Contemporary Ensemble 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 in “a mission worth following” (I Care If You Listen).
CREDITS
The International Contemporary Ensemble’s performances and commissioning activities during the 2023-24 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, Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, The Arlene and Larry Dunn Fund for Afrodiasporic Music, 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.