Christian Wolff & the ICE Ensemble
Valentine’s Day with Christian Wolff, February 14th, 2010, ISSUE Project Room, 6pm
ICE launches “On and Off the Page,” a series illuminating music that breaks down the barriers between written and improvised music. This inaugural concert spotlights Christian Wolff, a pioneering composer whose music explores the subtle interactions between performers and the music they play. Featured on the program will be Mr. Wolff’s classic Exercises and Microexercises, as well as NYC premieres of more recent works. Mr. Wolff will be joined by ICE members Nathan Davis, Cory Smythe, Gareth Flowers, Joshua Rubin, Dan Peck, and Erik Carlson.
About Christian Wolff
Christian Wolff was born in 1934 in Nice, France. He’s lived mostly in the U.S. since 1941. He studied piano with Grete Sultan and composition, briefly, with John Cage. Though mostly self-taught as a composer, the work of John Cage, Morton Feldman, David Tudor and Earle Brown have been important to him, as well as long associations with Cornelius Cardew and Frederic Rzewski. A particular feature of his music is the various freedoms it allows performers at the time of performance as well as the variable results possible for any one particular piece, for which various new notations have been invented. Underlying notions in the work are shared freedom, self-determination and democratically-spirited collaboration. The music is published by C.F. Peters, New York and much of it is recorded, on many labels. A number of pieces, starting in 1953, have been used and commissioned by Merce Cunningham and his dance company. Wolff has been active as a performer and as improvisor – with Takehisa Kosugi, Steve Lacey, Christian Marclay, Keith Rowe, William Winant, the group AMM, Kui Dong and Larry Polansky. His writings on music (up to 1998) are collected in “Cues: Writings and Conversations”, published by MusikTexte, Cologne. He has received awards and grants from the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Ford Foundation, DAAD Berlin, the Asian Cultural Council, the Fromm Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts (the John Cage Award for music) and the Mellon Foundation. He is a member of the Akademie der Kuenste in Berlin and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2004 he received an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts. Academically trained as a classicist, Wolff was professor of classics and music at Dartmouth College from 1971 to 1999.
About ICE
International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is a uniquely structured chamber music ensemble comprised of thirty dynamic and versatile young performers who are dedicated to advancing the music of our time. Through innovative programming, inter-disciplinary collaborations, commissions by young composers, and performances in nontraditional venues, ICE brings together new music and new audiences.
ICE was founded in 2001, and has rapidly established itself as one of the leading new-music ensembles of its generation. Awarded the American Music Center’s Trailblazer Award for 2010 and CMA/ASCAP’s 2010 Award for Adventurous Programming, the ensemble performs over fifty concerts a year in the US and abroad. Recent engagements include headline performances at the Musica Nova Festival (Helsinki, Finland), the Mostly Mozart Festival of Lincoln Center, the opening ceremonies of the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, and multiple engagements at Miller Theatre, including the US Premiere of Xenakis’ Oresteia. In addition to ICE’s performances at major venues throughout the world, the ensemble has self-produced eight large-scale contemporary music festivals in venues as wide-ranging as nightclubs, galleries and public spaces, many of which are free and open to the public. ICE has released critically acclaimed recordings on the Bridge, Naxos and New Focus labels.
A champion of music by emerging composers, ICE has given over 400 world premieres to date. In 2004, ICE launched the 21st Century Young Composers Project, a worldwide call-for-entries by composers under the age of 35, which has culminated in the world premieres of works by rising young composers in 27 different countries. Read more at www.iceorg.org.
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