Ensemble Evolution Fest: Opening Night
Free (RSVP required)
- Alice Teyssier, flute & soprano
- Rebekah Heller, bassoon
- Nathan Davis, percussion
- Sandra Kluge, tap percussion
- Fay Victor, voice
- Lesley Mok, drum set & percussion
- Shara Lunon, voice
- Dan Lippel, guitar
- yuniya edi kwon (eddy kwon), violin
- Wendy Richman, viola
- Lester St. Louis, cello
Sandra Kluge — Anything is Everything (world premiere; for tap percussion, voice, bassoon, & drumset/percussion)
Various — Selected works
This summer, International Contemporary Ensemble, in partnership with The New School's College of Performing Arts, presents Ensemble Evolution—a summer intensive designed to foster a holistic understanding of the artist as a global citizen—fully in-person for the first time from Monday, June 26 – Thursday, June 29, 2023 at Arnhold Hall.
Ensemble Evolution features an Opening Night concert on Monday, June 26, 2023 at 7pm at Ernst C. Stiefel Hall with world premiere performances of Cleo Reed's Reeding Room: The Early Oeuvre and Sandra Kluge's Anything is Everything, commissioned by International Contemporary Ensemble as part of the "Call for ____" program and performed by members of the Ensemble, in addition to more works to be announced.
About International Contemporary Ensemble
With a commitment to cultivating a more curious and engaged society through music, the International Contemporary Ensemble – as a commissioner and performer at the highest level – amplifies creators whose work propels and challenges how music is made and experienced.
https://www.iceorg.org/About Alice Teyssier, flute & soprano
About Rebekah Heller, bassoon
Rebekah Heller is an artist whose work aims to expand the sonic possibilities of her instrument and the field at large. Called "an impressive solo bassoonist" by The New Yorker, she is dedicated to exploration, experimentation, and a robust collaborative practice.
https://www.rebekahheller.com/About Nathan Davis, percussion
About Sandra Kluge, tap percussion
About Fay Victor, voice
Brooklyn, NY (USA) based sound artist/composer Fay Victor hones a unique vision for the vocalist’s role in jazz and improvised music. Victor encompasses a distinctive vocalizing, language and performing approach with the foundation of the jazz vocal idiom, now encompassing an “everything is everything” aesthetic bringing in references that span the globe.
https://www.fayvictor.com/About Lesley Mok, drum set & percussion
About Dan Lippel, guitar
About yuniya edi kwon (eddy kwon), violin
yuniya edi kwon (b. 1989 – also known as eddy kwon) is a violinist, vocalist, poet, and interdisciplinary performance artist based in Lenapehoking, or New York City. Her practice connects composition, improvisation, movement, and ceremony to explore transformation and transgression, ritual practice as a tool to queer space and lineage, and the use of mythology to connect, obscure, and reveal. As a composer-performer and improviser, she is inspired by Korean folk timbres and inflections, textures and movement from natural environments, and American experimentalism as shaped by the AACM. Her work as a choreographer and movement artist embodies an expressive release and reclamation of colonialism’s spiritual imprints, connecting to both Japanese Butoh and a lineage of queer trans practitioners of Korean shamanic ritual. In addition to an evolving, interdisciplinary solo practice, she performs and collaborates with artists of diverse disciplines, including The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Senga Nengudi, Du Yun, Tomeka Reid, International Contemporary Ensemble, Kenneth Tam, Isabel Crespo Pardo, Moor Mother, and Degenerate Art Ensemble. She has performed alongside Roscoe Mitchell, Mary Halvorson, Nicole Mitchell, Cory Smythe, Henry Threadgill, Susan Alcorn, Carla Kihlstedt, Jessika Kenney, Lesley Mok, Satomi Matsuzaki, and others. In 2023, she founded SUN HAN GUILD, a sound and performance collective with composer-improvisers Laura Cocks, Jessie Cox, DoYeon Kim, and Lester St. Louis. She is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Award in Music/Sound, an Arts Fellow at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, a Civitella Ranieri Fellow, a Johnson Fellow at Americans for the Arts, and a United States Artists Ford Fellow.
http://www.eddykwon.net/About Wendy Richman, viola
About Lester St. Louis, cello
Lester St. Louis (b.1993) is a New York-born and -based composer, improviser, cellist, sound designer, and curator. His work traverses through performance, installation, curation, artistic research, and recording. His works are rooted in dynamic environments of improvisation both sonically and socially, ecstatic sound worlds. flow and interaction. He has performed internationally throughout the U.S, the E.U, Canada, China, and in South America; and collaborates with artists such as Chris Williams [under the moniker HxH], Edi Kwon Jaimie Branch, Dre A. Hočevar, Charmaine Lee, Isabel Crespo Pardo, Emeka Okereke, Tortoise, Yo La Tengo, TAK Ensemble, The International Contemporary Ensemble, Random International, Superblue, Terrence Nance, Found Sound Nation, Wet Ink Ensemble, and many more. As a composer, Lester has been commissioned by artists such as The JACK Quartet, RAGE THORMBONES, Jennifer Koh, String Noise, and Ghost Ensemble, among others. He is deeply excited to see what new ventures and collaborations the future may bring and those that will be made.
https://metropolisensemble.org/artists-collection/lester-st-louis