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Contact: Katlyn Morahan | Morahan Arts & Media
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International Contemporary Ensemble Presents
SOUND IS AN OPENING at Abrons Arts Center, June 23

Featuring eddy kwon, Jen Shyu, and a newly commissioned World Premiere by Charmaine Lee

www.iceorg.org

New York, NY (June 1, 2022) — International Contemporary Ensemble appears at the Playhouse Theater at Abrons Arts Center for its first installment of SOUND IS AN OPENING, curated by eddy kwon, on Thursday, June 23, 2022 at 7:30pm. 

Tickets are free and RSVPs will be honored on a first come, first served, basis. A reservation does not guarantee entry.

SOUND IS AN OPENING, a three part series, will gather artists of the International Contemporary Ensemble community who have dynamic and varied connections to diaspora, and whose work creates, expands, and reframes spaces of home, transformation, and transgression. 

The first installment of SOUND IS AN OPENING: exhalation features three unique composer-performers in an exploration of voice, presence, and ritual, and includes a world premiere commission by Charmaine Lee, together with solo performances by eddy kwon and Jen Shyu.

“The artists in this first installment of SOUND IS AN OPENING, Charmaine Lee and Jen Shyu, are, in their distinct way, master builders: of keys, of doors, of spaces, and of worlds. In particular, their use of voice—both as a limitless instrument of expressive sound, and as an instrument of transformation—is distinct, potent, and utterly compelling,” said curator eddy kwon. “Diasporic experience, like all human experience, is mosaic, and our common edges are still, in a way, markers of difference. SOUND IS AN OPENING is one humble attempt to share, over several events, this spectrum of diverse life experience, perspectives, and practices, to do this with tenderness and honesty, and to invite us all into a space of inspired openness.”

Additional SOUND IS AN OPENING events to be announced.

Concert Information
SOUND IS AN OPENING: exhalation
Thursday, June 23, 2022 at 7:30pm
Playhouse Theater at the Abrons Arts Center | 466 Grand St (at Pitt St) | New York, NY 10002
Tickets: Free. RSVP at https://ci.ovationtix.com/209/performance/11092323?performanceId=11092323. Reservations are honored on a first come, first served basis. A reservation does not guarantee entry.
Link: https://www.abronsartscenter.org/program/sound-is-an-opening-iii-exhalation/

Artists:
eddy kwon, curator and interdisciplinary artist
Charmaine Lee, vocalist and composer
Jen Shyu, vocalist, composer, instrumentalist, dancer, producer
International Contemporary Ensemble
          Rebekah Heller, bassoon
          Josh Modney, violin
          Weston Olencki, trombone

About the 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. The Ensemble’s 39 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. Works by emerging composers have anchored the Ensemble’s programming since its founding in 2001, and the group’s recordings and digital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music’s present.

Described as “America’s foremost new-music group” (The New Yorker), the Ensemble has become a leading force in new music throughout the last 20 years, having premiered over 1,000 works and having been a vehicle for the workshop and performance of thousands of works by student composers across the U.S. The Ensemble’s composer-collaborators—many who were unknown at the time of their first Ensemble collaboration—have fundamentally shaped its creative ethos and have continued to highly visible and influential careers, including MacArthur Fellow Tyshawn Sorey; long-time Ensemble collaborator, founding member, and 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winner Du Yun; and the Ensemble’s founder, 2012 MacArthur Fellow, and first-ever flutist to win Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Prize, Claire Chase.

A recipient of the American Music Center’s Trailblazer Award and the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, the International Contemporary Ensemble was also named Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year in 2014. The group has served as artists-in-residence at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival (2008-2020), Ojai Music Festival (2015-17), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2010-2015). In addition, the Ensemble has presented and performed at festivals in the U.S. such as Big Ears Festival and Opera Omaha’s ONE Festival, as well as abroad, including GMEM-Centre National de Création Musicale (CNCM) de Marseille, Vértice at Cultura UNAM, Warsaw Autumn, International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, and Cité de la Musique in Paris. Other performance stages have included the Park Avenue Armory, ice floes at Greenland’s Diskotek Sessions, Brooklyn warehouses, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and boats on the Amazon River.

The International Contemporary Ensemble advances music technology and digital communications as an empowering tool for artists from all backgrounds. Digitice provides high-quality video documentation for artist-collaborators and provides access to an in-depth archive of composers’ workshops and performances. The Ensemble regularly engages new listeners through free concerts and interactive, educational programming with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 

Curricular activities include a partnership at The New School’s College of Performing Arts (CoPA), along with a summer intensive program, called Ensemble Evolution, where topics of equity, diversity, and inclusion build new bridges and pathways for the future of creative sound practices. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the Ensemble. Read more at www.iceorg.org and watch over 350 videos of live performances and documentaries at www.digitice.org.

About eddy kwon
eddy kwon (b. 1989) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Lenapehoking. Her practice connects composition, performance, improvisation, dance, and ceremony to explore transformation & transgression, ritual practice as a tool to queer ancestral lineage, and the use of mythology to connect, obscure, and reveal. As a composer-performer and improviser, she is inspired by Korean folk timbres & inflections, textures & 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. Learn more at www.eddykwon.net.

About Charmaine Lee
Charmaine Lee is a vocalist whose work is predominantly improvised, favoring a uniquely personal approach to expression concerned with spontaneity, playfulness, and risk-taking. Beyond extended vocal technique, Charmaine uses modular synthesis, feedback, and microphones to augment and distort the voice. Learn more at charmainelee.com.

About Jen Shyu
Jen Shyu is a Timorese-Taiwanese-American multilingual vocalist, composer, instrumentalist, dancer, and producer. As a ritualist, improviser, actress, researcher, educator, and advocate for music traditions worldwide, she plays Taiwanese moon lute, Korean gayageum, er hu, Japanese biwa, Timorese lakadou, violin, piano, and percussion, and sings in improvised languages and existing ones (Indonesian, Malaysian, Javanese, Taiwanese, indigenous Taiwanese languages, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Tetum, Korean, Japanese, etc). Learn more at www.jenshyu.com.

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