International Contemporary Ensemble Featured in PROTOTYPE Festival

The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is featured in two events as part of the fifth annual PROTOTYPEfestival - the New York City premiere of David Lang and Mark Dion's theatrical work anatomy theater, and the Silent Voices concert.

Inspired by actual medical texts from the 17th and 18th century, anatomy theater follows the progression of a convicted murderess from her confession to execution, to denouncement, and finally to dissection. Peabody Southwell (Sarah Osborne), Marc Kudisch (Joshua Crouch), Robert Osborne (Baron Peel), and Timura (Ambrose Strang) are featured together with the International Contemporary Ensemble in seven performances on January 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 at 8:00 p.m. at the BRIC House Ballroom.

On January 14 and 15 at 5:00 p.m. at the Florence Gould Hall at the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), ICE and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus are featured in Silent Voices, a multimedia, multi-composer stage work conceived by BYC Founding Artistic Director Dianne Berkun Menaker, and commissioned and produced by the Chorus. The project harnesses the power of young people to be instruments of change, giving voice to those silenced or marginalized by social, cultural or religious circumstances and features music by Sahba Aminikia, Jeff Beal, Rhiannon Giddens, Alicia Hall Moran, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Ellis Ludwig-Leone, Nico Muhly, Toshi Reagon, Ellen Reid, Kamala Sankaram, Caroline Shaw and Paul Miller/DJ Spooky and texts by Hilton Als, Michelle Alexander, Samad Behrangi, and Pauli Murray.

Program Information

anatomy theater
New York City premiere
January 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 at 8:00 p.m.

BRIC House Ballroom
647 Fulton Street
Brooklyn, NY 11217

A Ridge Theater Production. Developed and Produced by Beth Morrison Projects. Development support provided by BRIC and MassMoCA. anatomy theaterpremiered at LA Opera in a Beth Morrison Projects production in June 2016.

anatomy theater was co-commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, Ridge Theater, Justus & Helen Schlichting, Linda & Stuart Nelson, Paul King, Marla Mayer & Chris Ahearn. Additional commissioning support provided by BRIC, Nancy & Barry Sanders and Miles & Joni Benickes. anatomy theater is funded, in part, by an award from The National Endowment for the Arts - Art Works, and by public funds from The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional funding was provided by the Multi-Arts Production Fund (MAP), the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts and New Music USA.

Co-presented with BRIC Arts | Media | House

Silent Voices
January 14 and 15 at 5:00 p.m.

French Institute Alliance Française
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th Street
New York, NY 10022

Silent Voices is a co-commission of Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Brooklyn Academy Of Music, and WQXR, New York.

Silent Voices is generously supported by The Aaron Copland Fund for Music; the Amphion Foundation; Charles J. and Irene F. Hamm; the Howard Gilman Foundation; the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund; New Music USA; The BMI Foundation; The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Special thanks to Marcus Wainwright and rag & bone for supporting the project by dressing the Chorus.

Co-presented with French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF)

Tickets: Priced at $30, can be purchased from the Prototype Festival website at http://prototypefestival.org/.

About the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE)
The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is an artist collective committed to transforming the way music is created and experienced. As performer, curator, and educator, ICE explores how new music intersects with communities across the world. The ensemble's 35 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. Works by emerging composers have anchored ICE's programming since its founding in 2001, and the group's recordings and digital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music's present.

A recipient of the American Music Center's Trailblazer Award and the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, ICE was also named the 2014 Musical America Ensemble of the Year. The group currently serves as artists-in-residence at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts' Mostly Mozart Festival, and previously led a five-year residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. ICE has been featured at the Ojai Music Festival since 2015, and has appeared at festivals abroad such as Acht Brücken Cologne and Musica nova Helsinki. Other recent performance stages include the Park Avenue Armory, The Stone, ice floes at Greenland's Diskotek Sessions, and boats on the Amazon River.

New initiatives include OpenICE, made possible with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which offers free concerts and related programming wherever ICE performs, and enables a working process with composers to unfold in public settings. DigitICE catalogues the ensemble's performances in a free online streaming video library. ICE's First Page program is a commissioning consortium that fosters close collaborations between performers, composers, and listeners as new music is developed. EntICE, a side-by-side youth program, places ICE musicians within youth orchestras as they premiere new commissioned works together. Inaugural EntICE partners include Youth Orchestra Los Angeles and The People's Music School in Chicago. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for ICE. Read more at iceorg.org.

About PROTOTYPE
PROTOTYPE - OPERA/THEATRE/NOW is an annual festival of visionary opera-theatre and music-theatre works by pioneering contemporary artists from New York City and around the world. PROTOTYPE is a co-production of Beth Morrison Projects and HERE, two leaders in the creation and presentation of contemporary, post-classical, multi-disciplinary opera-theatre and music-theatre work. The festival is the only of its kind in New York City - presenting both complete performances as well as works-in-progress through partnerships with local performing arts venues.

Historically, the marriage of music and drama has been something composers tackled further along in their careers. Fast forward to today: serious young composers are now creating new works of opera-theatre/music-theatre, and we are in a second golden age of creation for the art form. It is poised to become the most exciting live arts medium in the 21st century, embodying a modern day notion of Wagner's gesamtkunstwerk.

PROTOTYPE gives voice to these composers whose works would generally be categorized as "contemporary classical" or "post-classical" rather than the more commercial musical theatre idiom that is being explored by other producers in New York and elsewhere. The festival provides a recurring showcase of these visionary chamber-sized opera-theatre and music-theatre pieces that are currently flooding the New York scene and are ready to explode at the national and international levels. The festival also presents exciting new works by International Artists, and hopes to be a global reference of artistic excellence in the field of opera and music-theatre.