International Contemporary Ensemble Presents SIRENS AND SILENCES and the World Premiere of BIOME II

On Friday, January 21, 2022 at 8:00PM, the International Contemporary Ensemble presents Fay Victor's SIRENS AND SILENCES, which will be the debut performance of Victor's composed work in a concert with the Ensemble after joining as a new, permanent Ensemble member in the summer of 2021, plus the world premiere of Kate Gentile's biome ii. The performance will take place at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn.

Fay Victor's SIRENS AND SILENCES (2020) was commissioned by the Jazz Coalition and is a "memory document" composition created to encapsulate "the moments when NYC was the epicenter of the Coronavirus pandemic and the sonic experience of living through that," according to Victor. Of hunkering down and staying home during the pandemic, "The quiet was deafening, punctuated for days only by the sound of sirens. I started recording those sirens. I recorded as many variations of sirens I heard-police, fire, ambulances. Later on, I transcribed these recordings and those tones became the basis for SIRENS AND SILENCES." The piece will feature Patrick Holmes (clarinet), Kalia Vandever (trombone), Mazz Swift (violin), and Marika Hughes (cello).

biome ii (2021), Kate Gentile's 13-movement composition for septet, was commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble. It consists of musical abstractions that twist and connect in "dream logic"-like ways, as if representing aspects of unfamiliar but interconnected systems, such as the balance of alien ecologies on a distant moon orbiting a gas giant. The septet orchestration allows for the full expansion of harmonic and rhythmic textures. The piece may assume a semi-modular structure in performance, using any number of movements in many possible orders. This performance of biome ii will feature Isabel Lepanto Gleicher (flute, piccolo), Jennifer Curtis (violin), Joshua Rubin (clarinet, bass clarinet), Rebekah Heller (bassoon), Matt Mitchell (piano), Ross Karre (vibraphone, percussion), and Kate Gentile (drumset).

In the spring of 2020, Gentile began her work with the International Contemporary Ensemble via their open call process to develop commissions. The music was composed with the parameters of the pandemic in mind, which meant focusing primarily on making a recording, and a live performance later on, if possible. The Ensemble sought to support Gentile's creative vision by executing two of her goals: First, that the musicians could come out of pandemic lockdown (having been vaccinated) to record the work together in Oktaven Audio with Ryan Streber, and second, that the work would have a live performance as soon as it was safe to do so. The recording of the complete version of biome ii was completed on April 17, 2021 and will be released in 2022. The live performance and world premiere of biome ii will be at this concert on January 21, 2022.

The January 21, 2022 performance is co-presented by the International Contemporary Ensemble, Roulette Intermedium and NYC Winter Jazzfest, which celebrates music as a living entity, wherein history collides with the future in every note. Winter Jazzfest is the annual New York home to the exciting and forward-thinking contemporary jazz music being made today. The 2022 Winter Jazzfest takes place from January 13 to 22, 2022.