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Ensemble intercontemporain Premieres Nick Bentz's a gleaming like ivory that slowly resolves until it becomes dust on Wigmore Hall's Voices of Today Series

May. 29, 2026

On May 16, Nick Bentz's a gleaming like ivory that slowly resolves until it becomes dust was premiered by Ensemble intercontemporain alongside works by Nina C Young, Kevin Puts, Amy Williams, and Anthony Cheung at Wigmore Hall as part of their Voices of Today series. Bentz notes:

"a gleaming like ivory that slowly resolves until it becomes dust is a fragment taken from a prose piece by David Wojnarowicz. It speaks of witnessing the process of bodily decay, the slow unravelling and disintegration of matter that has become unanimated, deprived of life. This piece is formally inspired by the image Wojnarowicz evokes: it is one of collapse, but also one of the slow encroachment and dismantling of optimism, a glacial disassembling of hope. Despite the finality implicit in Wojnarowicz’s words I approach the structure of collapse in this piece as a cyclical happening, evergreen. While everything rises and then falls, if only to rise again, it also revolves and spirals, spinning iterations outward." 

The work was co-commissioned by Wigmore Hall (with the generous support of the Marchus Trust and the Wigmore Hall Endowment Fund) and Ensemble intercontemporain.

Listen to Nick Bentz's the shifting earth (2024):

Nick Bentz's the shifting earth, performed by Thornton Edge, Don Crockett, conductor

To learn more about Nick Bentz, visit universaledition.com.

Nick Bentz
a gleaming like ivory that slowly resolves until it becomes dust (2025)
for violin, viola, violoncello, flute, clarinet in Bb, piano and percussion
15'

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