The International Contemporary Ensemble Presents 'The Shape of Forgetting' on March 11

For Immediate Release
Contact: Leah Rankin | Morahan Arts & Media
leah@morahanartsandmedia.com | 646-378-9386

The International Contemporary Ensemble Presents 
The Shape of Forgetting on March 11 at Roulette

The Ensemble Celebrates the 2025 Call for ___ Commission Program
World Premieres; Announces Applications for 2026

iceorg.org

February 4, 2026 (New York, NY) — The International Contemporary Ensemble returns to Roulette Intermedium on Wednesday, March 11, 2026 at 8:00 p.m. in The Shape of Forgetting, a celebration of the world premieres of this season’s Call For___ Commission Program composers, highlighting the Ensemble’s commitment to uplifting the emerging composers shaping new music today.

The Ensemble proudly presents world premieres by Camila Agosto and Lester St. Louis, whose works will be debuted alongside Paul Novak’s seven dreams about my body, a 2025 BMI Composer Award winner. The artists explore themes of time, transformation and interconnectedness through their own distinct compositional voices. The program will also include Miniature by Shrish A. Jawadiwar and Epiglot by Ensemble member Erin Rogers.

Agosto’s The Shape of Forgetting meditates on memory, identity, and release, imagining the soul shedding the layers of lived experience as it returns to a collective whole, and incorporates original and collaborative text that reflects our relationship with our deepest selves and the attachments we carry. 

Inspired by trance and the translation of electronic processes into acoustic settings, St. Louis composes a sextet for violin, cello, French horn, clarinet, piano, and double bass, weaving multirhythmic layers and moving harmonic networks that mirror the simultaneity of lived experience. emphatically non cypher. lingers on the way subtle events briefly align before drifting apart again, like life unfolding on multiple scales at once.

Each year, two early-career artists are commissioned for a new work to be premiered by the Ensemble. The selected artists receive workshop and rehearsal opportunities with the Ensemble’s musicians throughout the process, as well as mentorship and support for documentation. The Ensemble is proud to announce the next round of the Call for ____ Commission Program is now open, and they will be accepting applications until Friday, March 27, 2026 at 11:59 p.m. EST. Visit iceorg.org/call-for-2026 for more information.

Concert Information

The Shape of Forgetting: Call for ____ Commission Program World Premieres
Wednesday, March 11, 2026 | 8:00 PM
Roulette Intermedium | 509 Atlantic Avenue | Brooklyn, NY
Tickets: $25 advance; $30 doors; $20 Student/Senior (w/ ID, Senior 65 )
Link: https://roulette.org/event/international-contemporary-ensemble-the-shape-of-forgetting/

Program:
Lester St. Louis - emphatically non cypher. (*World Premiere, 2026)
Camila Agosto - The Shape of Forgetting (*World Premiere, 2026)
Paul Novak - seven dreams about my body (2024)
Shrish A. Jawadiwar: Miniature (2022)
Erin Rogers: Epiglot (2026)

Artists:
Alice Teyssier, voice, flute
Fay Victor, voice
Emmalie Tello, clarinet
Erin Rogers, saxophone
Nathan Davis, percussion
Erika Dohi, piano
Gabby Diaz, violin
Josh Modney, violin
Kyle Armbrust, viola
Mariel Roberts Musa, cello
Lizzie Burns double, bass

About Lester St. Louis
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, Ben Lamar Gay, Pheeroan Aklaff, Don Byron, Dre A. Hocevar, Deforrest Brown Jr, Charmaine Lee, Isabel Crespo Pardo, Emeka Okereke, 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 Ghost Ensemble among others.

About Camila Agosto
Camila Agosto is a composer, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. Her recent work and research are inspired by linked concepts of memory, perception, psychoacoustics, and somatic experience. Her electroacoustic music examines how we perceive sound and vibration, exploring their physiological, mental, and emotional impacts. In her work, Camila collaborates with musicians, visual artists, choreographers, and instrument builders, seeking intersections across artistic fields. Her compositions include both fully notated and improvisational works, with an emphasis on timbral and textural exploration. She aims to reveal the sonic potentialities of acoustic instruments while highlighting the human element in live performance. Her projects encompass acoustic and electroacoustic concert works, interdisciplinary collaborations with visual media and dance, installations, and fixed media creations. Storytelling and sharing histories are integral to her work, helping to construct worlds and soundscapes that explore complex concepts and create spaces for healing.

About Paul Novak
The "spellbinding" (The Washington Post) music of Chicago-based composer Paul Novak immerses listeners in shimmering and subtly crafted musical worlds full of color, motion, light, and magic. His recent projects engage with dreams and memory, queer identity, climate change and the natural world, and psychosomatic illness. Novak has been commissioned by and collaborated with orchestras, chamber ensembles, and musicians around the world. He has received awards from the Fromm Foundation, Barlow Endowment, ASCAP, BMI, American Academy of Arts and Letters, and more. He is the co-artistic director and flutist of Chicago-based ensemble Mycelium New Music, and is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago.

About the International Contemporary Ensemble
Described as “America’s foremost new-music group” (The New Yorker), the International Contemporary Ensemble is dedicated to supporting living composers through commissioning, developing, and premiering new works. Now in its third decade, the Ensemble has premiered over 1,000 works and plays a pivotal role in launching and shaping the careers of today’s most influential composers. Through its bold programming and innovative curation, the Ensemble continues to redefine the possibilities of contemporary music.

The International Contemporary Ensemble has brought its vision of a mosaic musical ecosystem to festivals and venues all over the world including Carnegie Hall, Maerzmusik/Berliner Festspiele, Warsaw Autumn, Miller Theatre Composer Portraits, Museum of Modern Art New York, Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, HEAR NOW Los Angeles, Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, NYU Skirball, Pioneer Works, Oberlin College, House of World Cultures, Ojai Music Festival, Peabody Conservatory, TIME:SPANS Festival, Big Ears Festival, Adelaide Festival, the Dutch National Opera, Cité de la Musique (Paris), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Japan Society.

Through trailblazing initiatives such as the Call for ____ Commission Program and Ensemble Evolution (in partnership with The New School’s College of Performing Arts), the Ensemble has had a major impact on the contemporary performance ecosystem in New York City, nationally, and internationally, supporting the creativity of its composer-collaborators and presenting workshops and performances for hundreds of student composers. Many of the Ensemble’s composer-collaborators have developed highly influential careers, such as Du Yun, who won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for the opera Angel’s Bone, which the Ensemble developed and premiered, and MacArthur Fellows Courtney Bryan and Tyshawn Sorey, winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize.

The Ensemble’s Digitice platform provides high-quality video documentation for artist-collaborators, as well as public access to an archive of composers’ workshops and performances. In addition, the Ensemble continues to build space for dialogue on equity, and has facilitated New Music Virtual Town Hall meetings for peer organizations and individual musicians to share resources, processes, and initiatives around equity and inclusion.

Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the Ensemble. Read more at www.iceorg.org 

This concert is made possible with support from Jerome Foundation and BMI Foundation.

The Ensemble’s performances and commissioning activities during the 2025-26 concert season are made possible by the generous support of our board of directors, many individuals, as well as the Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Fromm Music Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, The Arlene and Larry Dunn Fund for Afrodiasporic Music, Amphion Foundation, The Cheswatyr Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, BMI Foundation, New York State Council for the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and New York State Legislature. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the International Contemporary Ensemble.

Photo at top of release provided by the International Contemporary Ensemble.

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