Credit: Digitice
This Fall, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and Either/Or (EO) join forces with the Museum of Modern Art to present the world premiere of A Lick and A Promise by American artist, musician and composer Stephen Prina.
These concerts are part of the first in-depth survey to focus on Prina’s performances, drawing out a central theme in his work: time, and the way it shifts cultural values. MoMA’s survey offers an opportunity to celebrate Prina’s innovative approach to appropriation—one uniquely focused on sound and music—and the rare warmth and intellectualism that mark him as a prescient and still-evolving artist.
PROGRAM
Stephen Prina: The Way He Always Wanted It XI (2008)
Stephen Prina: A Lick and a Promise (2025, World Premiere)
PERFORMERS
International Contemporary Ensemble
Either/Or Ensemble
STEPHEN PRINA
Stephen Prina is an American artist, musician, and composer, born in 1954 in Galesburg, Illinois. He currently splits his time between Los Angeles, California and Cambridge, Massachusetts where he is a professor at the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) at Harvard University. Prina received his B.F.A. from the Northern Illinois University and an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts.
Prina works in a variety of media including musical performances. Each piece is related in some way and develops in a series of long-term projects that he frequently rearranges and re-presents in different exhibition and associative contexts.
Stephen Prina’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions worldwide. Solo exhibitions include English for Foreigners, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2020); galesburg, illinois+, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles; Stephen Prina, Museo Madre, Naples, Italy (2017) ¡HOLA! ¿QUÉ TAL?, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne (2014); Carve Out a Space of Intimacy, Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2011); Stephen Prina: Modern Movie Pop, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2010); Stephen Prina, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen (2009); The Second Sentence of Everything I Read is You, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden (2008); The Queen Mary, Petzel Gallery, New York (2006); Gaylen Gerber with Stephen Prina, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (2002); and To the People of Frankfurt am Main: At Least Three Types of Inaccessibility, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main (2000), among others.
Prina’s work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Familienbande, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2019); Double Lives: Visual Artists Making Music, MUMOK, Vienna (2018); Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age, Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2016); Take it or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014); Outside the Lines, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2013); This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2012), traveled to Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Von realer Gegenwart, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2010); Yokohama Triennal, Yokohama; Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008); Oh Girl, it’s a Boy!, Kunstverein München, Munich (2007); Who’s afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue? Positionen der Farbfeldmalerei, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden; Los Angeles, 1955-1985, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2006); Make Your Own Life: Artists In and Out of Cologne, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; The Power Plant, Toronto; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; in capital letters, Kunsthalle Basel (2002); Adorno. Die Möglichkeit des Unmöglichen, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main; Beau Monde: Toward a Redeemed Cosmopolitanism, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe (2001); Departures: 11 Artists at the Getty, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2000); Crossings: art to see and to hear, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (1998); Allegories of Modernism: Contemporary Drawing, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1992), among many others.
His work can be seen in public collections at the Tate, London; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.
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.