New York, NY (July 13, 2023) — International Contemporary Ensemble kicks off its 2023-24 season with a performance at the TIME:SPANS Festival on Friday, August 25, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, with the US premiere of a work by Andile Khumalo, as well as works by Wadada Leo Smith, Younghi Pagh-Paan, and Aida Shirazi. The Ensemble performs two concerts at Roulette - a George Lewis Portrait Concert on Thursday, October 5, 2023 at 8:00 p.m. and the world premiere of Yvette Janine Jackson’s new radio opera for large ensemble and electronics on Friday, January 19, 2024 at 8:00 p.m. The Ensemble also collaborates with Japanese performer/composer/poet/visual artist Tomomi Adachi for three performances exploring the music of John Cage at the Japan Society this season: Saturday, October 21, 2023 at 8:30 p.m., Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. and Thursday, December 7, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. International Contemporary Ensemble presents an Afromodernism program featuring two world premieres by Rome Prize-winning composer Courtney Bryan and Adegoke Steve Colson on Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. at Merkin Hall, and gives the US premiere of George Lewis’s Blombos Workshop (2020) on Monday, December 18, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. at the Park Avenue Armory. The Ensemble returns for the Composer Portraits series for works by pioneering German composer Carola Bauckholt on Thursday, February 8, 2024 at 8:00 p.m. at Miller Theatre. In an additional highlight, the Ensemble reunites with composer, visual artist, and multi-instrumentalist Douglas R. Ewart for a new collaboration with Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra for GIOfest in Glasgow, Scotland.
Artistic Director George Lewis calls this season “Polyaspora, Year One.” He said, “As our Ensemble enters its 21st year, finding the sound of the polyaspora assumes a planetary perspective. Leaving fixed genre labels behind, our polyaspora is intercultural, intermedial, and interdisciplinary, our polyaspora is conscious, collaborative, creolized, and connected. ‘International’ situates us in a cosmopolitan musical space; "contemporary” leads us to embody a mosaic identity; and “Ensemble” means that we work to build new transnational communities through sound.”
On Friday, August 25, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music the TIME:SPANS Festival presents International Contemporary Ensemble in an evening that exemplifies its concept of Polyaspora, including two premieres: the US premiere of Invisible Self by Andile Khumalo, who has been named one of the top five South African composers by BBC Music Magazine and one of the top 23 composers and performers to watch in 2023 by The Washington Post; and the NY premiere of Gondwana: Earth, a Blue Sanctuary, Oceans, Seas, Lakes, Rivers, Springs and Lagoons; Paradise Gardens and Skies by American composer Wadada Leo Smith, “one of the most celebrated new music composers of this young century” (Down Beat). Also on this exciting and diversely creative program are works by internationally renowned contemporary Korean-German composer Younghi Pagh-Paan and emerging Iranian composer Aida Shirazi, whose work has been described as “affecting” by The New Yorker.
On Thursday, October 5, 2023 at 8:00 p.m. the Ensemble gives its first performance at Roulette of the season with a George Lewis Portrait Concert that includes the US premiere of H. narrans (2020) for voice and chamber ensemble, with text drawn from the writings of postcolonial theorist Sylvia Wynter. The next Roulette concert on Friday, January 19, 2024 at 8:00 p.m. features the world premiere of Yvette Janine Jackson’s new radio opera for large ensemble and electronics, commissioned by the Ensemble and funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. Jackson’s radio operas combine music, dialogue and effects to stimulate audience imagination and initiate conversations. This radio opera, inspired by Augusto Boal's book “Theatre of the Oppressed,” addresses the environmental and socioeconomic impact of space travel and space tourism on people living near rocket launch sites and test ranges. Jackson’s music physically places the audience in the middle of the narrative through the use of multi-channel surround sound, while the libretto is constructed using found text from myriad sources–news articles, anecdotes, live streams, or corporate websites. The spoken words themselves may be digitally edited or covered by other instruments, and sounds that are sung may have no particular semantic meaning. Rather than prescribing fixed meanings, this work invites the audience to draw upon personal experience and knowledge to co-construct its narrative.
The Ensemble also collaborates with performer/composer/poet/visual artist Tomomi Adachi on three events celebrating John Cage’s relationship with Japanese culture, presented by the Japan Society this season. On the first concert, on Saturday, October 21, 2023 at 8:30 p.m., John Cage’s Ryoanji will be performed telematically, as members of the Ensemble (Michael Lormand, trombone; Lizzie Burns, double bass; Clara Warnaar, percussion) perform alongside musicians playing live in Japan - Hitomi Nakamura on the hichiriki, the ancient double-reed woodwind, and Maki Ota on vocals - streamed into the theater from a tea house in Kanazawa City, Japan. The performance will be accompanied by a captivating backdrop of hypnotic 3D visuals depicting the raked sand of the Zen garden created by Dr. Tsutomu Fujinami, a researcher at the prestigious Japan Advanced Institute for Science and Technology. A lecture on the origins of Cage's fascination with Japanese culture and how those interests manifest in Ryoanji, led by John Cage scholar James Pritchett, precedes the performance.
In the second concert on Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 7:30 p.m., Adachi brings John Cage’s unrealized project, Noh-opera: Or the Complete Musical Works of Marcel Duchamp, to life in a world premiere performance. Cage envisioned a premiere in Japan, but not enough of the work was ever finished to be staged. In response to this dream project, Adachi freshly imagines the work into existence by seamlessly integrating captivating aspects of western opera and noh. Adachi's artificial intelligence-written music and lyrics for the work are based on the confounding paradoxes found in Zen Buddhist koans, succinct but open-ended riddles on the human condition. The performance features the distinctly unique voice of Gelsey Bell (recognized as the “future of experimental vocalism” by The New York Times), renowned Japanese noh actor Wakako Matsuda, and five wind instrumentalists from the International Contemporary Ensemble.
The final concert presented by the Japan Society on Thursday, December 7, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. presents a
collaboration with experimental sound artists Tania Caroline Chen and Victoria Shen and featured artist Tomomi Adachi that recreates the essential works performed at John Cage's historic visit to Japan in 1962, often referred to as the "Cage Shock." The evening includes a string quartet of Josh Modney (violin), Kyle Armbrust (viola), Wendy Richman (viola), and Michael Nicolas (cello), all musicians from the International Contemporary Ensemble, performing Sapporo (1962) by Toshi Ichiyanagi (1933-2022), the esteemed Japanese composer and first husband of Yoko Ono. A pre-concert lecture will be delivered one hour prior to the start of the show by musician and Cage scholar James Pritchett.
On Wednesday, November 1, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. at Merkin Hall, International Contemporary Ensemble presents an Afromodernism program featuring two world premieres – the first, a new work by Rome Prize-winning composer Courtney Bryan in honor of the 50th wedding anniversary of Arlene and Larry Dunn (who also commissioned the piece), inspired by Sounds of Freedom, and the second by Adegoke Steve Colson (commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation), a longtime member of the famed Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Colson’s piece, MIRRORS, presents thoughts concerning the human condition in the hopes of stimulating listeners to reflect on the current state of American society and the divisions and turmoil that we witness on a daily basis. Conducted by Vimbayi Kaziboni, the program reveals the new Afromodernism as an intercultural, multigenerational space of innovation. Additional works include Runagate, Runagate, Wendell Logan’s classic 1989 work for tenor and chamber ensemble, and Thread and Pull by the intermedia composer Brittany J. Green.
Later in November, International Contemporary Ensemble members Rebekah Heller (bassoon), Wendy Richman (viola), Nathan Davis (percussion), and Clara Warnaar (percussion) reunite with composer, visual artist, and multi-instrumentalist Douglas R. Ewart in collaboration with the internationally acclaimed Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO) for the 2023 edition of the annual international GIOFest, which takes place from November 23-25, 2023 at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Scotland. Like the Ensemble, GIO emphasizes “community and diversity - both our local community and the wider global community of experimental music that we’re proudly part of.”
International Contemporary Ensemble joins Artistic Director George Lewis on Monday, December 18, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. at the Park Avenue Armory for the US premiere of his Blombos Workshop (2020) for piano, which engages postcolonial theorist Sylvia Wynter’s celebration of the human, and Assemblage (2013) for nonet, which explores in musical form the practice of assemblage—artmaking that recombines and recontextualizes collections of natural and human-made objects. Performed as part of the AACM’s year-long Artists Studio residency, these Lewis works are performed by members of the Ensemble on a special double bill with the music of Amina Claudine Myers.
Returning for the Miller Theatre’s annual Composer Portraits series, the Ensemble performs a program of works by pioneering German composer Carola Bauckholt on Thursday, February 8, 2024 at 8:00 p.m. The selection of works spans 20 years, anchored by Oh, I See, written for clarinet, violin, cello, video, and two balloons. Bauckholt’s work focuses on the phenomena of perception and understanding, and her music blurs boundaries between visual arts, musical theater, and concert music.
ABOUT OUR 2023-2024 COMMISSIONED ARTISTS
ADEGOKE STEVE COLSON
Photo by Sharon Sullivan
Adegoke Steve Colson - decorated pianist, composer, historian, educator - has written over 200 pieces for small ensemble, several of which are performed and have been recorded by other artists, He has also received several commissions for large works. His work can be heard on labels such as ECM, Columbia/Sony,Black Saint and Silver Sphinx - a label co-owned with his wife Iqua. Select innovators on his projects include musicians Reggie Workman, Henry Threadgill, Anthony Davis, Andrew Cyrille, and Tyshawn Sorey; poet/activists Amiri and Amina Baraka, dancer Carmen de Lavallade, and playwright/screenwriter Richard Wesley. Commissions include scoring and conducting the music of piano stride master Willie “The Lion” Smith for the National Lost Jazz Shrines project, and a tribute premiered at New Jersey Performing Arts Center for two pianos, septet and choir celebrating the 350th Anniversary of Newark, NJ. – the third oldest city in the U.S. Recent premieres; Incandescence ( 2021) commissioned by American Composers Forum, and Suite Harlem (2022), part of a South Arts Initiative supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
A New Jersey native, Colson spent time in Chicago joining the influential Association for Advancement of Creative Musicians in 1971 before graduating from the Northwestern University School of Music. He was inducted into the East Orange Hall of Fame in 2018, joining fellow hometown musicians Dionne Warwick, Naughty by Nature and Whitney Houston. Colson continues to teach in Bloomfield College’s Creative Arts Technology Department - an initiative he helped launch 35 years ago - and is currently completing a book, “Thoughts for a New Discussion of History”.
COURTNEY BRYAN
Photo by Taylor Hunter
Courtney Bryan, a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, is “a pianist and composer of panoramic interests” (New York Times). She is currently the composer-in-residence with Opera Philadelphia.
Byran’s compositions have been performed by the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra (Creative Partner, 2020-2023), Jacksonville Symphony (Mary Carr Patton Composer-In-Presidence, 2018-2020), New York Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, LA Phil, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Chicago Sinfonietta, and London Sinfonietta in a wide range of renowned venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and Blue Note Jazz Club.
Recent accolades include the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (2018), Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition (2019-2020), United States Artists Fellowship (2020), and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship (2020-2021). She is the Albert and Linda Mitz Professor of Music at Newcomb College in the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University.
YVETTE JANINE JACKSON
Photo by Catherine Koch
Yvette Janine Jackson is a composer and installation artist who brings attention to historical events and social issues through her radio operas and narrative soundscape compositions. Her album Freedom, produced by the Fridman Gallery, debuted as Contemporary Album of the Month in The Guardian and its track “Destination Freedom” won the ZKM Giga-Hertz Production Award 2021. She was commissioned to compose an interactive radio opera for bass clarinet, cello, and game engine for the 2023 Giga-Hertz Festival. Recent projects include Underground (Codes), a permanent installation at Wave Farm in Acra, New York; Hello, Tomorrow! for orchestra and electronics co-commissioned by American Composers Orchestra and Carnegie Hall; and a sound and light composition, RETURN, for the James Turrell, "Twilight Epiphany" Skyspace at Rice University. Yvette is an assistant professor in Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry in the Department of Music and teaches for the Theater, Dance & Media program at Harvard University.
About International Contemporary Ensemble
With a commitment to cultivating a more curious and engaged society through music, the International Contemporary Ensemble – as a commissioner and performer at the highest level – amplifies creators whose work propels and challenges how music is made and experienced. The Ensemble’s 39 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. Works by emerging composers have anchored the Ensemble’s programming since its founding in 2001, and the group’s recordings and digital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music’s present.
Acclaimed as “America’s foremost new-music group” (The New Yorker), the Ensemble has become a leading force in new music throughout the last 20 years, having premiered over 1,000 works and having been a vehicle for the workshop and performance of thousands of works by student composers across the U.S. The Ensemble’s composer-collaborators—many who were unknown at the time of their first Ensemble collaboration—have fundamentally shaped its creative ethos and have continued to highly visible and influential careers, including MacArthur Fellow Tyshawn Sorey; long-time Ensemble collaborator, founding member, and 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winner Du Yun; and the Ensemble’s founder, 2012 MacArthur Fellow, and first-ever flutist to win Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Prize, Claire Chase.
A recipient of the American Music Center’s Trailblazer Award and the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the International Contemporary Ensemble was also named Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year in 2014. The group has served as artists-in-residence at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival (2008-2020), Ojai Music Festival (2015-17), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2010-2015). In addition, the Ensemble has presented and performed at festivals in the U.S. such as Big Ears Festival and Opera Omaha’s ONE Festival, as well as abroad, including GMEM-Centre National de Création Musicale (CNCM) de Marseille, Vértice at Cultura UNAM, Warsaw Autumn, International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, and Cité de la Musique in Paris. Other performance stages have included the Park Avenue Armory, ice floes at Greenland’s Diskotek Sessions, Brooklyn warehouses, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and boats on the Amazon River.
The International Contemporary Ensemble advances music technology and digital communications as an empowering tool for artists from all backgrounds. Digitice provides high-quality video documentation for artist-collaborators and provides access to an in-depth archive of composers’ workshops and performances. The Ensemble regularly engages new listeners through free concerts and interactive, educational programming with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Curricular activities include a partnership at The New School’s College of Performing Arts (CoPA), along with a summer intensive program, called Ensemble Evolution, where topics of equity, diversity, and inclusion build new bridges and pathways for the future of creative sound practices. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the Ensemble. Read more at www.iceorg.org and watch over 350 videos of live performances and documentaries at www.digitice.org.
CREDITS
The International Contemporary Ensemble’s performances and commissioning activities during the 2023-24 concert season are made possible by the generous support of the Ensemble’s board, 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, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, The Cheswatyr Foundation, Amphion Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, New Music USA’s Organizational Development Fund, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, BMI Foundation, as well as public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, 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 Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, and the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) from the U.S. Small Business Administration. The International Contemporary Ensemble was the Ensemble in Residence of the Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology from 2018-2021. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the International Contemporary Ensemble.