Credit: Digitice
The Met’s 2025 Roof Garden Commission artist joins the world-renowned International Contemporary Ensemble for a discussion and world premiere performances of her musical compositions.
Artist Jennie C. Jones’s fascination with sound manifests in her sculptures, from early works made from audio cables to her 2025 Met Roof Garden Commission, Ensemble, a set of abstract string instruments that “hits a high note” (Artnet).
For this special performance, the International Contemporary Ensemble, “America’s foremost new music group” (The New Yorker) brings to life Jones’s “graphic scores”— works on paper that investigate sound through visual means. Jones and the Ensemble’s Artistic Director, composer and musicologist George Lewis, who has published articles on her graphic scores, will also discuss the scores’ formal and sonic structure, which reframes Minimalism’s legacy and illuminates new intersections between music, abstraction, and experimentation.
PROGRAM
Jennie C. Jones: Oxide Score
Jennie C. Jones: Met Color Study
PERFORMERS
International Contemporary Ensemble
JENNIE C. JONES
Jennie C. Jones (1968) was born in Cincinnati, OH and lives and works in Hudson, NY. Her interdisciplinary practice seeks to engage viewers visually and aurally. Drawing on painting, sculpture, sound, and installation, Jones’ conceptual works reflect on the legacy of modernism and minimalism. Their unconventional materials and reductive compositions highlight the perception of sound within the visual arts.
Her solo exhibitions include Jennie C. Jones: Constant Structure, The Arts Club of Chicago, IL (2020); Compilation, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX (2016); Absorb/Diffuse, The Kitchen, New York, NY (2013); Directions: Jennie C. Jones: Higher Resonance, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (2013); Counterpoint, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2011); and RED, BIRD, BLUE, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, GA (2009), among others. Her work has been included in countless group exhibitions, including Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow, New Orleans, LA (2020); Ground/work, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (2020); Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (2020); The Shape of Shape, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2019); Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, traveled to National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. (2017); The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2015), traveled to Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (2016); Outside the Lines; Black in the Abstract, Part 2: Hard Edges/Soft Curves, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, TX (2014); and Silence, The Menil Collection, Houston, TX (2012), traveled to Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, CA (2013). Jones’ work is in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, among others. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Rose Art Museum, Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist-in-Residence Award (2017); Robert Rauschenberg Award (2016); Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2013); The Studio Museum in Harlem, Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize (2012); and William H. Johnson Prize (2008). Jones is a Visiting Critic at Yale University, New Haven, CT and a faculty member in Painting at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY. Jones is also represented by PATRON Gallery, Chicago, IL.
INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ENSEMBLE
Described as “America’s foremost new-music group” (The New Yorker), International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is dedicated to supporting living composers through commissioning, developing, and premiering new works. Now in its third decade, ICE has premiered over 1,000 works and plays a pivotal role in launching and shaping the careers of today’s most influential composers. Through its bold programming and innovative curation, ICE continues to redefine the possibilities of contemporary music.
ICE has brought its vision of a mosaic musical ecosystem to festivals and venues all over the world including Carnegie Hall, Maerzmusik/Berliner Festspiele, Warsaw Autumn, Miller Theatre Composer Portraits, Museum of Modern Art New York, Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, HEAR NOW Los Angeles, Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, NYU Skirball, Pioneer Works, Oberlin College, House of World Cultures, Ojai Music Festival, Peabody Conservatory, TIME:SPANS Festival, Big Ears Festival, Adelaide Festival, the Dutch National Opera, Cité de la Musique (Paris), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Walt Disney Concert Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Japan Society.
CREDITS
The International Contemporary Ensemble’s performances and commissioning activities during the 2025-26 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, Fromm Music Foundation, Amphion Foundation, The Cheswatyr Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Siemens Musikstiftung, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, BMI Foundation, as well as public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York State Council for the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and New York State Legislature. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the International Contemporary Ensemble.