International Contemporary Ensemble Releases Three Albums On TUNDRA IMPRINT

The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) has released three new albums over the past six months on its in-house recording label, TUNDRA, an imprint of New Focus Recordings, including George Lewis: The Will to Adorn, released in January 2017; Aesopica: Music of Marcos Balter, released in October 2016; and ism, released in September 2016. Recordings on the TUNDRA imprint represent ICE's most intimate collaborations between musicians and composers, frequently including ICE-commissioned works, and offer a platform for ICE members to curate their own personal recordings.

Modern musical polymath and frequent ICE collaborator George Lewis' work is spotlighted in The Will to Adorn, comprising mostly live recordings from 2011-2016 which highlight Lewis' philosophies and their influence on ICE's aesthetiC. Lewis explains, "As with all improvisations, including our everyday-life human efforts, [a] performance becomes an emergent phenomenon, achieved through negotiation; success will be less a matter of individual freedom than of personal responsibility." The recording includes ICE commissions by Lewis, The Will to Adorn (2011) featuring ICE led by Steven Schick, and Born Obbligato (2013), featuring ICE together with Steven Schick on percussion, conducted by David Fulmer; Lewis' open-form scores Shadowgraph, 5 (1977) and Artificial Life (2007); and T.J. Anderson's In Memoriam Albert Lee Murray (2013) featuring Lewis on trombone.

Aesopica, featuring members of ICE, celebrates the long-standing collaboration between ICE and Brazilian-born composer, Marcos Balter, with five pieces Balter wrote for ICE over a seven year period. The centerpiece of the album is Aesopica Suite (2011), an evening-length work premiered in the ICELab compositional developmental project, with adaptations of texts from Aesop's Fables. The recording also includes Wicker Park (2009), a celebration of the famous Chicago neighborhood with Ryan Muncy (saxophone); Codex Seraphinianus (2014), inspired by the Luigi Serafini work of the same name with Claire Chase (flute), Ryan Muncy (soprano saxophone), Nadia Sirota (viola), and Rebekah Heller (bassoon); Descent from Parnassus (2010) with Claire Chase (flute); and the sextet Ligare (2013).

ICE member and saxophonist Ryan Muncy's second solo album, ism, highlights the diversity and versatility of the saxophone's increasingly prominent role in new music; the album's title evokes its goal to cast the "-ism"-a suffix which has signified a number of musical practices and artistic movements-onto the ever-increasing breadth of tremendous new works for saxophone. The centerpiece of the album, James Tenney's 1978 Saxony, outlines the instruments within the saxophone family through the use of harmonics and the overtone series. Also on the recording is Erin Gee's Mouthpiece XXIV featuring Ross Karre (percussion), in addition to solo works including David Reminick's Gray Faces, Morgan Krauss' masked by likeness, EVan Johnson's Largo calligraphic / "patientiam," and Lee Hyla's Pre-Amnesia.

All three albums can be purchased by visiting http://iceorg.org/recordings and are additionally available on iTunes and Amazon.

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.