Credit: Digitice
MacDowell Presents continues in 2026 primarily in the Manhattan gallery of America’s oldest and pre-eminent artist residency program. This series convenes conversations and programs across MacDowell’s diverse disciplines to explore questions shaping the lives and practices of artists and arts workers today.
This TK in partnership with The International Contemporary Ensemble, MacDowell will present a concert of new works curated in partnership with Pulitzer Prize winning composer and MacDowell Fellow, Marcos Balter, along with a brief talk around the creative process of music composition in today's world - interrogating the barriers to sustaining artistic practice and the systems that determine what is preserved, celebrated, or forgotten. What conditions are necessary for thriving communities to support works of art that will endure? There will be a brief celebratory reception following the program.
PROGRAM
TBA
PERFORMERS
International Contemporary Ensemble
MACDOWELL
Composer Edward MacDowell and pianist Marian MacDowell founded MacDowell in 1907 to nurture the arts by offering creative individuals of the highest talent an inspiring environment in which to produce enduring works of the imagination. In 1997, MacDowell was honored with the National Medal of the Arts. Each year, MacDowell welcomes 300 architects, composers, filmmakers, interdisciplinary artists, theatre artists, visual artists, and writers from across the United States and around the globe. More than 16,000 residencies have been awarded in the last 119 years. Recipients have included Ayad Akhtar, James Baldwin, Michael Chabon, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Louise Erdrich, Osvaldo Golijov, Cathy Park Hong, Glenn Ligon, Dee Rees, Vijay Seshadri, Ann Patchett, Colson Whitehead, and Julia Wolfe.
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.