International Contemporary Ensemble Performs a Composer Portrait of Carola Bauckholt at Miller Theatre on February 8

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

International Contemporary Ensemble Performs a Composer Portrait of Carola Bauckholt at Miller Theatre on February 8

Program Spans 20 Years of Work by Carola Bauckholt

iceorg.org

New York, NY (January 16, 2024) — International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) returns to the Miller Theatre’s Composer Portraits series to perform a program of works by the pioneering German composer Carola Bauckholt on Thursday, February 8, 2024 at 8:00 p.m. at Miller Theatre. The program features four of Bauckholt’s chamber works: Oh, I See, Membran, Schlammflocke II, and Treibstoff.

The four works on this Miller Theatre Portrait come from a very fecund period in Bauckholt’s creative oeuvre. Bauckholt is fond of using noisy sounds, particularly those produced by unconventional means. Her work focuses on the phenomena of perception and understanding, blurring boundaries between visual art, musical theater, and concert music. Her work is evocative and often whimsical, but also meditative and introspective, 

The selection of her works on this program spans 20 years, and is anchored by Oh, I See, a work for voice, chamber ensemble, video, and two balloons that operates out of an intermedia sensibility. The ensemble and the balloons create acoustically enhanced sonorities that resemble the rustlings and grunting of animals. At some point the balloons take on a visual life of their own, becoming two large eyeballs searching in space. Another work on the program, Schlammflocke II, uses combinations of orchestrated industrial and organic sound bodies. 

In an interview with Tim Munro, who was commissioned by Miller Theatre to write the program notes for this concert, Bauckholt said, “What is not music? To find sounds in my environment, in my daily life, is a form of enjoying life.”

Concert Information
Composer Portraits: Carola Bauckholt
International Contemporary Ensemble
Thursday, February 8, 2024 at 8:00 p.m.
Miller Theatre | 2960 Broadway | New York, NY 10027
Tickets: $20
Link: https://www.millertheatre.com/events/carola-bauckholt  

Program:
Carola Bauckholt - Oh, I See (2015-16)
Carola Bauckholt - Membran (2014)
Carola Bauckholt - Schlammflocke II (2012)
Carola Bauckholt - Treibstoff (1995)

Artists:
International Contemporary Ensemble
          David Fulmer, conductor
          Fay Victor, voice
          Alice Teyssier, voice & piano
          Gareth Flowers, trumpet
          Joshua Rubin, clarinet
          Emmalie Tello, clarinet
          Isabel Lepanto Gleicher, flute
          Adrian Morejon, bassoon
          Josh Modney, violin
          Kyle Armbrust, viola
          John Popham, cello
          Randy Zigler, bass
          Jacob Greenberg, piano
          Levy Lorenzo, percussion
          Nathan Davis, percussion

         Nicholas Houfek, lighting designer
         Caley Monahon-Ward, audio engineer
         Ross Karre, video designer

About Carola Bauckholt
Carola Bauckholt was born in Krefeld, Germany, in 1959. After working at the Theater am Marienplatz (TAM), Krefeld for several years, she studied composition at the Musikhochschule Köln with Mauricio Kagel (1978 - 1984). She founded the Thürmchen Verlag (music publisher) along with Caspar Johannes Walter in 1985, and six years later they founded the Thürmchen Ensemble.

?She has received numerous residencies and prizes such as the Bernd Alois Zimmermann Scholarship from the city of Cologne (1986), a residency at the Villa Massimo in Rome (1997), in 1998 she was designated the Artist of the Year by the State of North Rhine Westphalia, and she was selected to represent Germany at the World Music Days in Mexico City 1992, Copenhagen 1996, Seoul 1997 and in Zurich 2004. She was awarded the German Composers Prize from the GEMA in the category of experimental music in 2010. From London International Animation Festival 2019 she received the "Best Sound Design Award" for "The Flounder" in collaboration with Elizabeth Hobbs and Klangforum Wien. For 2021 she has been invited to a three-month stay at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. 

She teaches as guest professor in Santiago de Chile (2010), Ostrava Tschechische Republik (2011 and 2013), Amsterdam (2012 and 2014), Krakau (2012), Zürich (2012), Apeldoorn (2013), Kiev (2013) Oslo (2014 and 2015), Mexiko City (2014), Monterrey (2015), London (2015), Moskau and Tchaikovsky City (2016), Valencia (2018), Barcelona (2018 und 2021), Bludenz (2018, 2019), Haifa (2019) Chicago (2019), Luxembourg (2020), Graz (2021) and in Germany.

In 2013, she was elected as a member of Akademie der Künste in Berlin, from November 2021 on as the director of the music section. In 2015, she was appointed as professor of composition with focus on contemporary music theatre at the Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität in Linz, Austria. In 2020, she was elected as a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. 

A central theme of Bauckholt's work is the examination of the phenomena of perception and understanding. Her compositions often blur the boundaries between visual arts, musical theater and concert music. She is especially fond of using noisy sounds, which are often produced by unconventional means (such as extended instrumental techniques or bringing everyday objects to the concert hall). It is important to note that these noises are not just part of some kind of a predetermined compositional structure, but rather they are carefully studied and left free to unfold and develop at their own pace lending the compositions their own unique rhythm.

About International Contemporary Ensemble
Now in its third decade, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is a multidisciplinary collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators committed to building and innovating collaborative environments in order to inspire audiences to reimagine how they experience contemporary music and sound. The Ensemble creates a mosaic musical ecosystem as “America’s foremost new-music group” (The New Yorker), honoring the diversity of human experience and expression by commissioning, developing, recording, and performing the works of living artists in “a mission worth following” (I Care If You Listen). 

Co-founded in 2001 by flutist and MacArthur “genius” Fellow Claire Chase, the Ensemble has premiered over 1,000 works and is the recipient of the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, as well as Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year Award. Past artistic leadership includes co-founder Claire Chase and Ensemble members Joshua Rubin, Rebekah Heller, and Ross Karre. Notable presenting partners have included Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, TIME:SPANS Festival, Roulette, and Miller Theatre. The Ensemble has given performances at Warsaw Autumn, Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music, Cité de la Musique (Paris), Park Avenue Armory, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ojai Music Festival, and Big Ears Festival as well as in venues such as the Dutch National Opera, Carnegie Hall, and Walt Disney Concert Hall.

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, by supporting the creativity of their composer-collaborators, as well as 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 Tyshawn Sorey and Courtney Bryan. 

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 

The International Contemporary Ensemble’s performances and commissioning activities during the 2023-24 concert season are made possible by the generous support of the Ensemble’s board, many individuals, as well as the Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, The Cheswatyr Foundation, Amphion Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, New Music USA’s Organizational Development Fund, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, BMI Foundation, as well as public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council for the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, and the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) from the U.S. Small Business Administration. The International Contemporary Ensemble was the Ensemble in Residence of the Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology from 2018-2021. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the International Contemporary Ensemble.

Photo of Carola Bauckholt by Astrid Ackermann

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