credit: Lester St. Louis
Listen to the Cry of the World, the inaugural project of the Cheswatyr Incubator (a collaboration between PS21, International Contemporary Ensemble, and the Cheswatyr Foundation), is a full-length piece exploring the idea of ecology and blackness by composer, drummer, and scholar Jessie Cox. Developed in close collaboration with Ensemble musicians, the experimental piece has undergone two workshops at the Ensemble’s headquarters in Downtown Brooklyn, which will be followed by a week-long residency at PS21 in July, culminating in this world premiere performance.
The piece builds a live acoustic environment in which voice, instruments, trees, strings, and electronics interact as one resonant system. Taking inspiration and texts from Martinician philosopher Éduard Glissant, the work centers the question of relations between people, environment, technologies, and histories to propose a poetic intervention in our world’s crises. Sounds migrate, distort, and decay across connected materials.
PROGRAM
Jessie Cox: Listen to the Cry of the World (2026, World Premiere)
PERFORMERS
Vimbayi Kaziboni, conductor
Josh Modney, violin
Carrie Frey, viola
Lester St. Louis, cello
Randy Zigler, double bass
Joshua Rubin, bass clarinet
Nicolee Kuester, horn
Fay Victor, voice
Levy Lorenzo, percussion
Clara Warnaar, percussion
Dennis Sullivan, percussion
Jessie Cox is Assistant Professor of Music at Harvard University. A composer, drummer, and scholar, his work engages experimental music as a site of critical inquiry, bringing together music studies, Black studies, and critical theory. His first monograph, Sounds of Black Switzerland: Blackness, Music, and Unthought Voices (Duke UP, 2025), explores how experimental musical practices and thinking with Blackness open alternative ways of worlding.
Cox’s compositional practice spans avant-garde classical music, experimental jazz, and sound art. His music is often described as speculative or Afrofuturist in orientation, engaging questions of time, space, and collective imagination. It has been noted for its distinctive textures, structural instability, and expressive intensity; writing in The New Yorker, Alex Ross has described Cox’s work as an example of “dynamic pointillism,” marked by “breathy instrumental noises, mournfully wailing glissandi, and climactic stampedes of frantic figuration.” He has worked with ensembles and institutions including the Sun Ra Arkestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Klangforum Wien. He has received a Fromm Foundation commission, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, and the ASCAP Fred Ho Award.
Alongside his compositional work, Cox’s scholarly writing advances practice-based approaches to music as a form of research. His writing appears in Composing While Black, liquid blackness, Critical Studies in Improvisation, Sound American, American Music Review, Musik-Diskurse nach 1970, and others.
INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ENSEMBLE
Described as “America’s foremost new-music group” (The New Yorker), International Contemporary Ensemble is dedicated to supporting living composers through commissioning, developing, and premiering new works. Now in its third decade, the Ensemble 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, the Ensemble continues to redefine the possibilities of contemporary music.
The Ensemble 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, Fromm Music Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, The Arlene and Larry Dunn Fund for Afrodiasporic Music, 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.