International Contemporary Ensemble to Perform BOULEZ REBOOTED At Carnegie Hall

As part of Carnegie Hall's Pierre Boulez centennial celebration, International Contemporary Ensemble will perform a cutting-edge concert on Thursday, January 30, 2025 at 7:30 p.m. at Zankel Hall Center Stage. The concert includes the world premiere of an interactive work for artificial intelligence and live performers inspired by Boulez, as well as music by Boulez himself and composers inspired by him, including Philippe Manoury, Kaija Saariaho, and Tyshawn Sorey.

The French composer, conductor, and writer Pierre Boulez was one of the crucially important figures of the twentieth-century musical avant-garde. In 1977, he founded the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), which became the world's best-known center for computer music. Both Philippe Manoury and Kaija Saariaho, two of the world's most influential and widely performed composers, worked extensively with IRCAM's model of collaboration between composers, scientists, performers, and engineers, one that still resonates strongly today as part of Boulez's ongoing legacy.

At the top of the program, Manoury's Hypothèse du Sextuor takes a repetitive motif from Debussy's Des pas sur la neige as a starting point for sonic experimentation while Saariaho's Sombre, a work composed for the famed Rothko Chapel, takes its "minimal form" and "heartbreaking content" from fragments of American poet Ezra Pound's very last Cantos. The performance of Sombre features baritone Will Liverman, who starred in the title role in the Metropolitan Opera's acclaimed presentation of Anthony Davis's X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, and recently received another Grammy Award nomination for his 2024 album Show Me The Way.

Pulitzer Prize winner Tyshawn Sorey's octet Sentimental Shards, performed by the Boulez-founded Ensemble Intercontemporain in 2019, can be seen as part of what Sorey has always acknowledged as a Boulezian influence. Meanwhile, Boulez's own Anthèmes II presents his recombinatorial mode of composing, in which all electronic sounds are generated in real time during the performance from the sounds of the violin.

The final work on the program takes the experiments of Anthèmes II a step further, showcasing the latest breakthroughs in responsive music-performance technology with the world premiere of Pliages, hommage à Pierre Boulez. Conceived by the head of the Music Representation Research Group at IRCAM, Gérard Assayag, ICE percussionist/electronics-engineer Levy Lorenzo, and International Contemporary Ensemble, the work incorporates the advancements of Somax2, an artificial intelligence application created at IRCAM in the REACH research project (reach.ircam.fr) that can co-create real-time improvisations with live musicians, either autonomously or steered by a human musician. Trained via an engagement with Boulez's works, this premiere is an homage to the creator of the institute where this research was born.

Concert Information:

International Contemporary Ensemble presents Boulez Rebooted
Thursday, January 30, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.
Zankel Hall Center Stage at Carnegie Hall | 881 7th Ave | New York, NY 10019
Tickets: $50
Link: https://iceorg.org/events/2024/boulez-rebooted

Program:
Kaija Saariaho - Sombre (2012)
for bass flute, baritone, harp, percussion, and bass
Philippe Manoury - Hypothèse du Sextuor (2011)
for flute, clarinet, piano, violin, cello, percussion
Tyshawn Sorey - Sentimental Shards (2014)
for string quartet, two vibraphones, glockenspiel, and piano
Pierre Boulez - Anthèmes II (1997)
for violin and electronics
Pliages, hommage à Pierre Boulez (2025) *World Premiere
for ensemble and Somax2 AI electronics
Concept: Gérard Assayag, Levy Lorenzo, International Contemporary Ensemble

Artists:
Will Liverman, voice
Isabel Lepanto Gleicher, flute
Alice Teyssier, voice & flute
Emmalie Tello, clarinet
Gabriela Diaz, violin
Josh Modney, violin
Wendy Richman, viola
Kivie Cahn-Lipman, cello
Erika Dohi, piano
Nuiko Wadden, harp
Randy Zigler, bass
Nathan Davis, percussion
Ross Karre, percussion
Levy Lorenzo, Somax2 interactive AI and percussion
Marco Fiorini and Levy Lorenzo, computer music design