From March 10 to March 14, the International Contemporary Ensemble traveled from New York City to Oberlin for a weeklong residency filled with workshops, collaborations, and presentations, culminating in a concert tonight, March 14, at 7:30 p.m. in Warner Concert Hall. Described as “new-music virtuosos” by The New Yorker, the ensemble has travelled across the world and, per their guiding principles, “strives to cultivate a mosaic musical ecosystem that honors the diversity of human experience and expression by commissioning, developing, and performing the works of living artists.”
ICE collaborated with students across varying musical disciplines in creative, unique, and informative ways during their first residency on campus in over a decade. This residency is an important way to connect current professionals with students interested in contemporary music, building upon its Oberlin roots. Of the 38 artists in ICE, eight participated in the residency: flutist Elise Blatchford, OC ’05; clarinetist Joshua Rubin, OC ’99; Associate Professor of Horn David Byrd-Marrow; harpist Nuiko Wadden, OC ’02; pianist Erika Dohi; Associate Professor of Percussion Ross Karre, OC ’05; violinist Josh Modney; and cellist Michael Nicolas. Also in residence is MacArthur Fellow composer Courtney Bryan, OC ’04, whose piece Blooming (2017) will be performed tonight.
ICE has a thoroughly Oberlin-centric program in store. In fact, the founding of the ensemble traces back to Oberlin, where Avery Fisher Prize recipient and MacArthur Fellow flutist Claire Chase, OC ’01, and other Oberlin students, including Rubin, were united by Director of Contemporary Music Ensemble and Sinfonietta and Professor of Conducting Timothy Weiss and encouraged to begin collaborating with student composers to form a contemporary ensemble.
“The foundation of the group is secured at Oberlin,” Rubin said. “To see the vast amount of music that was out there but rarely or little performed because it’s so new, I wanted to be part of the story of growing that repertoire and telling those stories for the first time. After Oberlin, Claire lived in Chicago and I lived in New York, and we started talking by phone to try to organize concerts. The first year out, the first concerts happened both in Chicago and then soon after in New York. As the group grew, it eventually moved offices to New York. Then I started to work for it and to be part of its development, and I was then the program director in 2008 or 2009.”
Rubin credited his collaborative experiences at Oberlin as paramount to developing ICE.
“Du Yun, OC ’01, who was a composer here and has gone on to have an amazing career, wrote a wonderful piece where she got a chance to understand my playing and I got a chance to understand her music,” Rubin said. “She then made a duet for myself and a flutist here, Eric Lam, OC ’00, who was also a member of [ICE]. It was a remarkable experience to have a conversation about a piece from before it was written on the page to the moment that I received it on the stage. And that’s the kind of experience we’re always chasing as musicians.”
Since its founding, ICE has been able to travel across the world. From a residency in Japan, to visiting the Conservatorio de las Rosas in Mexico, to performing over 100 concerts across varying New York City venues during the Mostly Mozart Festival and ICE’s 10th Anniversary, the artists have been able to work together effectively to establish the ensemble on an international scale. Their residency at Oberlin is both an extension of their mission but also a special opportunity to collaborate with current Oberlin students.
“It’s very difficult at Oberlin to organize side-by-side projects where students play alongside visiting professionals,” Karre said. “Usually that has to do with time and not a lack of willingness — there’s always an eagerness on the parts of students to do this. So, one of the things I have is gratitude for the student participants in this project to take a risk and do something on a shorter timeline. Everybody sounds amazing and they’re all having a great time. What I hope they see is an opportunity to structure a group of like-minded human beings and they can go off and do things in these self-formed groups that can last for a quarter century, like ICE has. So hopefully that’s what the outcome is from this.”
ICE’s workshops also provided information to students about work as professional musicians, such as Rubin’s and Karre’s lecture on their repertoire and management database LUIGI, named after Italian composer Luigi Nono. The other lectures also dove into their own repertoire, digging deeper into the history of contemporary music and dedicating a large portion of their performances to Wendell Logan, a legendary composer and the creator of Oberlin’s jazz department. Overall, ICE’s residency deepened the connection between Oberlin students, the world of contemporary music, and professional programming.
“Contemporary music is not simply another music,” Karre said. “It is music made today. The most important thing is to have an open mind and explore this music without fear that the audience will reject it because they’re not familiar with it. Rubin and I have probably played collectively over a thousand concerts [with ICE], and I’ve never had an experience where an audience member resents the opportunity to try something new. But it’s a fear we often have. … Dispense with that fear, play the music with intention and care, and everyone will get something out of it.”
