Ann Cleare & Alex Mincek in ICE's "Animal Behaviors"

by Ted Gordon on June 5, 2017, 5:07 p.m.

(Ryan Muncy, saxophonist)

The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) consists of some of the best instrumentalists in contemporary music, who regularly champion ensemble works by some of the most fascinating composers of our time. In a free "pop-up" concert at Columbia's Miller Theatre on June 6th, members of ICE will split off to perform solo and duo works that dig into the sonic profiles of individual instruments and players, in a program titled "ICE: Animal Behaviors". 

ICE saxophonist Ryan Muncy will perform Ann Cleare's luna (the eye that opens the other eye) for alto saxophone, as well as Alex Mincek's Pendulum III, for alto saxophone and piano, alongside pianist Jacob Greenberg. In Cleare's luna, the composer writes that "the saxophone should be thought of as a dragonfly with eyes so big they cover almost its entire head, giving it a helmeted appeaance and a full 360-degree field of vision." Check out a recording below. 

ICE and Cleare will return to the Miller Theatre in 2018 with a Composer Portrait concert, featuring a newly-commissioned work, two world premieres, and performances of the square of yellow light that is your window and dorchadas. 

Mincek's Pendulum IIIis an early entry in the composer's Pendulum series, in which musical material oscillates between two poles, accellerating, decelerating, reaching tipping points, and repeating. Check out a 2015 recording by Michael Ibrahim and Ron Stabinsky below. 

Seth Parker Woods Plays Alvin Singleton's "Argoru II"

by Ted Gordon on May 30, 2017, 11:22 a.m.

Cellist Seth Parker Woods has risen to the top of his generation: a virtuoso cellist who knows no boundaries, Woods easily travels between (and indeed blurs the differences between) the worlds of new music, improvisation, performance art, and electro-acoustic experimentation. On June 1st in Athens, Greece, as a part of Documenta 14, Woods will perform Alvin Singleton's Argoru II, alongside George Lewis' Not Alone and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay's asinglewordisnotenough (invariant), in a concert that also features veteran composer, performer, and instrument designer Peter Zinovieff. 

Argoru II forms part of Singleton's Argoru series of compositions for solo instruments. "Argoru", in the Twi language spoken in Ghana, means "to play". As Carman Moore writes,

In Argoru II the composer constructs a world of "strange characters" for whom he seems to have created an original language which they use to scream out, cajole, shout, mumble, and chuckle. Single powerful shots alternate with long phrase ultra-soft scramblings. This is the theatre of sound."

Check out a recording of Argoru II, performed by Ronald Crutcher, below.

Vijay Iyer Premieres "City of Sand" with A Far Cry and Silk Road Ensemble

by Ted Gordon on May 25, 2017, 3:21 p.m.

The city of Dunhuang, located in modern China's Northwestern province of Gansu, was for centuries a major landmark in the silk road that connected dozens of cultures across two continents. Known in early Arabo-Persian as "Saju", or "Shazhou", this "city of sand" has inspired Vijay Iyer to compose an eponymous piece for the Silk Road Ensemble and A Far Cry, which will premiere in Boston on May 26th.

(photo: Bart Babinski)

City of Sand, which was co-commissioned by the Silk Road Ensemble and A Far Cry, takes inspiration from millenia-old caves found in Dunhuang, which contain what Iyer calls a "deliriously hybrid Buddhism informed by Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, early Islam, Taoism, Confucianism, and Manichaeism." Iyer cites this cave's "organic globalism" as inspiration for his new piece, which uses improvisation to "help us make the most of our shared presence."

Iyer's new work is scored for clarinet, tabla, pipa, percussion and string orchestra. The performance features soloists from the Silk Road Ensemble, including Kinan Azmeh (clarinet), Sandeep Das (tabla), Wu Man (pipa), and Joseph Gramley (percussion).

A live-stream of the sold-out concert will be available at A Far Cry's website. Check out Iyer discussing his previous collaboratin with the Silk Road Ensemble—2013's Playlist for an Extreme Occasion—below.