International Contemporary Ensemble’s cellist Katinka Kleijn is joined by cellist, composer, and improviser Aliya Ultan in a performance-discussion on pushing the boundaries of cello performance, using other sonic materials to vibrate and interact with the cello. New sound worlds emerge, interrogating how people interact with their environment and found objects. Ultan explores the sonic phenomena of trash by building gowns and sculptures out of glass bottles, cans, tampons, fishing line, styrofoam, and plastics. This is specifically enacted in Ultan’s "Residuum: a suite for cello and trash," commissioned by Kleijn for Chicago’s Frequency Festival, featuring Kleijn as a cellist, dancer, vocalist, and sculptor. Kleijn and Ultan will discuss the lineage of various techniques they have discovered together as well as current developments in Residuum becoming a larger work.
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About TUES@7
“Tues@7” are regular opportunities to engage with members and collaborators of the International Contemporary Ensemble. Artists will reflect on past world premieres, pull back the curtain on upcoming works-in-process, and dig deeply into the DigitICE archive to see how collaborations, new works, and sound creations have blossomed over the past 19 years. We look forward to staying engaged in the virtual space through COVID-19 so that our audience and collaborators have a weekly destination for extraordinary new music.
Katinka Kleijn
Called “a player of formidable expressive gifts” by the NYT, cellist Katinka Kleijn has appeared as soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, at Lincoln Center, and the Tokyo Metropolitan theater; in recital at Carolina Performing Arts and the Library of Congress; and is a Drag City Records artist. A member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and International Contemporary Ensemble, Kleijn enjoys a genre defying career; her composition Forward Echo for 11 improvisers premiered at the Instigation Festival, and her devised work Water on the Bridge for cellos and swimming pool with Lia Kohl was presented by the city of Chicago.
Aliya Ultan
Aliya Ultan (b. 1996) is a multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, composer, improviser, and filmmaker. Emerging from homelessness and domestic violence, Aliya’s creative means for survival have taken many forms. Classically trained as a cellist, composer, and improviser, Aliya has worked with the New York Philharmonic, Vijay Iyer, Tyshawn Sorey, and Douglas Ewart among others. Alongside Aliya’s endeavors as a composer-performer, she has worked as Program Director for Make Music Cleveland providing hundreds of instruments to displaced families across Ohio as well as free concerts in venues that are otherwise financially inaccessible. As a dancer, Aliya has taught in public schools across the states and abroad with an emphasis on interdisciplinary outcomes. Aliya is now completing her master’s degree at Wesleyan University researching audiovisual scoring systems in relation to a new series of transmedia works.
Credits:
We are grateful for the support of the NYC COVID-19 Response and Impact Fund in The New York Community Trust in making this program possible.
Performances and commissioning activities during the 2020-21 concert season are made possible by the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, A.N. and Pearl G. Barnett Family Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Amphion Foundation, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Pacific Harmony Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, The Casement Fund, BMI Foundation, as well as public funds from the 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 Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the Illinois Arts Council Agency. The International Contemporary Ensemble is the Ensemble in Residence of the Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for ICEensemble.