The International Contemporary Ensemble proudly presents world premieres by Camila Agosto and Lester St. Louis, whose works will be debuted alongside Paul Novak’s seven dreams about my body, a 2025 BMI Composer Award winner. The artists explore themes of time, transformation and interconnectedness through their own distinct compositional voices. The program will also include Miniature by Shrish A. Jawadiwar, and Epiglot by Ensemble member Erin Rogers.

Agosto’s The Shape of Forgetting meditates on memory, identity, and release, imagining the soul shedding the layers of lived experience as it returns to a collective whole, and incorporates original and collaborative text that reflects our relationship with our deepest selves and the attachments we carry.

Inspired by trance and the translation of electronic processes into acoustic settings, St. Louis composes a sextet for violin, cello, French horn, clarinet, piano, and double bass, weaving multirhythmic layers and moving harmonic networks that mirror the simultaneity of lived experience. Emphatically non cypher lingers on the way subtle events briefly align before drifting apart again, like life unfolding on multiple scales at once.

Lester St. Louis: emphatically non cypher (2026, World Premiere)
Camila Agosto: The Shape of Forgetting (2026, World Premiere)
Paul Novak: seven dreams about my body (2024)
Erin Rogers: Epiglot (2026)
Shrish Jawadiwar: Miniature (2022)

International Contemporary Ensemble
Alice Teyssier voice flute
Fay Victor voice
Emmalie Tello clarinet
Erin Rogers saxophone
Nathan Davis percussion
Erika Dohi piano
Gabby Diaz violin
Modney violin
Kyle Armbrust viola
Mariel Roberts Musa cello
Lizzie Burns double bass

A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing.

Described as “America’s foremost new-music group” (The New Yorker), International Contemporary Ensemble is dedicated to supporting living composers through commissioning, developing, and premiering new works. Now in its third decade, the Ensemble has premiered over 1,000 works and plays a pivotal role in launching and shaping the careers of today’s most influential composers. Through its bold programming and innovative curation, the Ensemble continues to redefine the possibilities of contemporary music. The Ensemble has brought its vision of a mosaic musical ecosystem to festivals and venues all over the world including Carnegie Hall, Maerzmusik/Berliner Festspiele, Warsaw Autumn, Miller Theatre Composer Portraits, Museum of Modern Art New York, Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, HEAR NOW Los Angeles, Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, NYU Skirball, Pioneer Works, Oberlin College, House of World Cultures, Ojai Music Festival, Peabody Conservatory, TIME:SPANS Festival, Big Ears Festival, Adelaide Festival, the Dutch National Opera, Cité de la Musique (Paris), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Walt Disney Concert Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Japan Society.