For 20 years, the International Contemporary Ensemble has been a home for experimental new music, the artists who make it, and the community that supports it. In celebration of its 20th anniversary, the Ensemble announces a season of performances and programs highlighting the artists who have shaped the past two decades, many of them skyrocketing to individual prominence, and those who will shape the third. Highlights of the season include new Ensemble members Matana Roberts and Fay Victor presenting their work at Miller Theatre and Roulette Intermedium respectively; Artist-in-Residence Vimbayi Kaziboni conducting a portrait concert of composer Felipe Lara; and a NYU Skirball presentation of two works by founding Ensemble member and Pulitzer Prize-winner Du Yun.
As the International Contemporary Ensemble enters its third decade, it re-commits to being a home for artists to develop their authentic practice with adventurous collaborators, realize their work at the highest level, and take part in the co-creation of a musical ecosystem that honors the diversity of human expression and experience. Other artists championed by the Ensemble over the last two decades include Rome Prize-winner Ash Fure, MacArthur Foundation Fellow Tyshawn Sorey, Nordic Council Music Prize-winner Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Rome Prize-winner Suzanne Farrin, MacArthur Foundation Fellow George E. Lewis, and many more.
Composer Marcos Balter, one of the Ensemble's first iceLAB-commissions in 2011 and Board Member, comments, “To act boldly requires courage. To exist boldly, however, requires much more than that. For two decades, the International Contemporary Ensemble has always chosen the uncharted and the unearthed not as destinations but as home. The trust and dedication of its musicians, and their advocacy towards new voices in contemporary music have changed the trajectories of so many artists around the globe, myself included.”
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