The International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Adapter, and The City of Tomorrow woodwind quintet present a three-part program featuring works by Ursula Mamlok, Natasha Anderson, and Felipe Lara under the direction of Nick DeMaison. The program includes rarely heard works by Ursula Mamlok alongside two US premieres by Anderson and Lara. Alice Teyssier and The City of Tomorrow feature as soloists.
Performers:
International Contemporary Ensemble
Ensemble Adapter
The City of Tomorrow:
Elise Blatchford—Flute
Stuart Breczinski—Oboe
Rane Moore—Clarinet
Nanci Belmont—Bassoon
Leander Star—Horn
Alice Teyssier, soprano
Nick DeMaison, conductor
Program:
Ursula Mamlok: Four German Songs for string orchestra (World Premiere)
Ursula Mamlok: Breezes
Ursula Mamlok: Concertino for wind quintet & chamber orchestra
Natasha Anderson: Cleave (US Premiere)
Felipe Lara: Brutal Mirrors (US Premiere)
The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is an artist collective that is 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.
Since Chicago Magazine first described his early opera projects as “Chicago’s most daring and avant-garde” in 2010, Nicholas DeMaison has continued to prove himself as one of the most capable conductor/composers in the young generation of multi-talented musicians working to reimagine classical institutions and genres. He is Co-Artistic Director of Wavefield. In recent seasons he has lead the premiere productions of Pauline Oliveros’s The Nubian Word for Flowers (which he assembled posthumously for performance – ICE/Roulette), Nathan Davis’s Hagoromo (ICE/AOP/BAM Next Wave), Mikael Karlsson’s The Echo Drift (ICE/AOP/Prototype Festival), Mojiao Wang’s Encounter (Beijing Modern Music Festival), James Ilgenfritz’s The Ticket That Exploded, Charles Fussell’s The Astronaut’s Tale, and of newly commissioned orchestral works by Miya Masaoka, Zach Layton, Erica Ball, Eli Greenhoe, and others. The US premiere of his arrangement of Milhaud’s La Mère Coupable by OnSite Opera & ICE was lauded as “a natural fit”. He has been a regular collaborator with ICE, ECCE, American Opera Projects, and previously worked with Giants are Small, Ensemble Sospeso, Talea Ensemble, and Opera Cabal among others. Also an active composer, Nicholas’s music spans from chamber works with live electronic audio and video components to works for chorus and orchestra. Ensembles that have performed DeMaison’s music include The New York Philharmonic, Giants Are Small, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, NOISEBridge, andPlay, Del Sol String Quartet, ensemble dal niente, UCSD New Music Ensemble, Hunter College Campus School Orchestra, South Hadley Chorale, Florilegium Chamber Choir and Opera Cabal, and has been featured at June in Buffalo.
The City of Tomorrow is a woodwind quintet with a fearless aesthetic and a commitment to 21st-century music. Gold medalists of the 2011 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, the ensemble has been presented in New York at the DiMenna Center, Trinity Wall Street, Spectrum, and at IN\TER/SECT, co-presented by Bryant Park and Chamber Music America. Their U.S. tours have included prestigious festivals and series, including the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Series in Chicago, the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Michigan, and Red Note New Music Festival in Illinois. The quintet’s work has also been supported by residencies at the Banff Center for Arts & Creativity and the Avaloch Farm Music Institute. Their 2018-19 season includes residencies at Tufts University in Boston and the Vermont College of Fine Art.
adapter is a German-Icelandic ensemble for new music based in Berlin. The core of the group is formed by a quartet of flute, clarinet, harp, and percussion. Together with selected instrumentalists, chamber music ensembles with up to ten players emerge from this core. In addition to numerous world premieres, Adapter dedicates itself in concerts and in the studio to an individual and international repertoire of contemporary music. In its own projects and co-productions, the ensemble also tests cross-border working methods in various genres. In workshops, acquired knowledge about composition, study and performance of contemporary music is shared with composers, instrumentalists, and other creatives worldwide.
This performance is made possible in part by the generous support of the Dwight and Ursula Mamlok Foundation. It is a co-production between The International Contemporary Ensemble and Roulette.
