International Contemporary Ensemble Returns to Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart for 12th Consecutive Year

The pioneering International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) returns to Lincoln Center's 2019 Mostly Mozart Festival for its twelfth consecutive season with three unique programs: Fure and Thorvaldsdottir onJuly 25, Inside Voice on August 3, and IFCA Composer Portraits on August 5. Having performed annually at the Mostly Mozart Festival since 2008, ICE was named Artist-in-Residence for the festival in 2011.

On Thursday, July 25, 2019 at 7:30pm in Lincoln Center's David Rubenstein Atrium, the International Contemporary Ensemble performs a concert celebrating the sound worlds of pioneering composers Ashley Fure, Anna Thorvaldsdottir andBergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir. Works to be performed include Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Sequences (2016) and Illumine (2016), Ashley Fure's Something to Hunt (2014), and Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir's Esoteric Mass (2014).

The Ensemble premiered Sequences at the New York Public Library in September 2016 and recorded Illumine for its critically acclaimed Sono Luminus album AEQUA.

Ashley Fure's Something to Hunt revolves around the silence, anticipation, and singularity of purpose of a tiger ready to pounce, focusing on compulsion and drive. It asks, "What motivates a sound, what pulls it forward? Can we conjure, outside tonality, that inexplicable sense of craving that seems to tug one note toward another?" Now based between Brooklyn and Reykjavík, composer Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir was recently selected as one of the Ensemble's six first ever ICEcommons Artists-in-Residence. This performance of her work is part of her residency, which includes a paid commission, collaborative workshop opportunities, promotional support, and world premiere and repeat performances, and video and audio documentation throughout the entire creative process.

On Saturday, August 3, 2019 at 9:00pm at Merkin Concert Hall, the International Contemporary Ensemble explores the expressive potential of traditional Persian, Hungarian, American, and Japanese instruments in a program of works influenced by ancient ritual, oceanic wonderment, Irish Bardic poetry, and beyond in Inside Voice. This inventive evening, led by conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni in his Mostly Mozart Festival debut, features the New York premiere of Nathan Davis's Inside Voice (2018), Irish composer Ann Cleare's teeth of light, tongue of waves (2017-18), György Kurtág's Tre pezzi, Kate Soper's The Ultimate Poem is Abstract (2016) featuring Soper as soprano soloist, Anahita Abbasi's Sketch I (2012), and culminates in the world premiere of Dai Fujikura's Shamisen Concerto performed by Hidejiro Honjoh in his Mostly Mozart Festival debut.

Inside Voice is a program of sonic identities shaped by instruments common to the home region of each composer. The kamancheh, the guitar, the shamisen, and the cimbalom share the same features: a musical string under tension to produce tones, harmonies, and timbres. But their sound characteristics, histories, identities, and the ways in which these composers build new relationships them celebrate a rich history of musical invention.

The International Contemporary Ensemble performs the music of Anahita Abbasi, Aida Shirazi, and Niloufar Nourbakhshfrom the Iranian Female Composers Association (IFCA) at Bruno Walter Auditorium on Monday, August 5, 2019 at 7:00pm. The free OpenICE concert will be preceded by a mini-documentary about the composers. When Niloufar Nourbakhsh decided to fully dedicate herself to a lifetime of composition, she found few mentors to look up to in Iran. After moving to the US, she discovered many other Iranian female composers working throughout the world and eventually connected with Anahita Abbasi and Aida Shirazi, forming the IFCA in 2017. The IFCA acts as a platform to support, promote, and celebrate Iranian women in music through concerts, public performances, installations, interdisciplinary collaborations, and workshops.

The International Contemporary Ensemble is an artist collective that is transforming the way music is created and experienced. As performer, curator, and educator, the Ensemble 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 the Ensemble'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, the International Contemporary Ensemble 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. The International Contemporary Ensemble was featured at the Ojai Music Festival from 2015 to 2017, and at recent festivals abroad such as gmem-CNCM-marseille and Vértice at Cultura UNAM, Mexico City. Other performance stages have included the Park Avenue Armory, The Stone, ice floes at Greenland's Diskotek Sessions, and boats on the Amazon River.

Read more at www.iceorg.org.

The Mostly Mozart Festival is a presentation of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA) serves three primary roles: presenter of artistic programming, national leader in arts and education and community engagement, and manager of the Lincoln Center campus. A presenter of thousands of free and ticketed events, performances, tours, and educational activities annually, LCPA offers a variety of festivals and programs, including American Songbook, Avery Fisher Career Grants and Artist program, David Rubenstein Atrium programming, Great Performers, Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Awards, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Lincoln Center Vera List Art Project, LC Kids, Midsummer Night Swing, Mostly Mozart Festival, White Light Festival, the Emmy Award-winning Live From Lincoln Center, which airs nationally on PBS, and Lincoln Center Education, which is celebrating more than four decades enriching the lives of students, educators, and lifelong learners. As manager of the Lincoln Center campus, LCPA provides support and services for the Lincoln Center complex and the 11 resident organizations: The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Film at Lincoln Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Juilliard School, Lincoln Center Theater, The Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, New York Philharmonic, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, School of American Ballet, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

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Photo Credit: Armen Elliott

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