International Contemporary Ensemble and PRiSM Present Music, AI, and Co-Creation on May 16

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

International Contemporary Ensemble and PRiSM Present
Music, AI, and Co-Creation on May 16

Featuring Six World Premieres Created with 
PRiSM-Developed Artificial Intelligence Techniques

Photo Credits: Emily Howard (PC: Chris McAndrew), Robert Laidlow (PC: Jonathan Slater), Megan Steinberg (PC: Sam Walton), Bofan Ma (PC: Lu Liu), Zakiya Leeming (PC: David John), Sam Salem (PC: Self Portrait), Hongshuo Fan (PC: Lina Yan), and David De Roure (PC: Sally-Anne Stewart)

iceorg.org

New York, NY (March 28, 2024) — International Contemporary Ensemble collaborates with the Royal Northern College of Music’s Center for Practice and Research in Science and Music (PRiSM) to present an evening of six world premieres on Thursday, May 16, 2024 at 8:00 p.m. at Roulette Intermedium. PRiSM, one of the leading world centers for research in artificial intelligence and music, brings together researchers across the creative arts and the sciences to develop new digital technology and creative practice that address fundamental questions about what it means to be human and creative today.

PRiSM’s founder-director and composer, Emily Howard, has curated a program of new works for ensemble by UK-based composers Sam Salem, Robert Laidlow, Zakiya Leeming, Bofan Ma, Megan Steinberg, and Howard herself. Performed by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, the works utilize PRiSM’s wide range of experimental tools for generating music via artificial intelligence techniques, as well as new machine listening software for real-time gesture recognition and classification, developed by PRiSM researchers Hongshuo Fan and David De Roure, University of Oxford computer scientist, mathematician, musician, and PRiSM’s Technical Director.

“It is hugely exciting to be in the thick of PRiSM’s artistic and technological inventions,” said Emily Howard, “and I cannot wait to experience the six new works, brought to life by the world-renowned International Contemporary Ensemble.”

Concert Information
MUSIC, AI, AND CO-CREATION
International Contemporary Ensemble
Thursday, May 16, 2024 at 8:00 p.m.
Roulette Intermedium | 509 Atlantic Ave | Brooklyn, NY 11217
Tickets: $25 advance, $30 doors, $20 Student/Senior (w/ ID, Senior 65 )
Link: https://roulette.org/event/international-contemporary-ensemble-and-prism/ 

Program: 
An evening of new works by:

Emily Howard
Sam Salem
Bofan Ma
Megan Steinberg
Zakiya Leeming
Robert Laidlow

Artists:
Vimbayi Kaziboni, conductor
Alice Teyssier, voice
Fay Victor, voice
Josh Modney, violin
Mariel Roberts, cello
Isabel Lepanto Gleicher, flute
Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet
Dan Lippel, guitar
Greg Chudzik, bass
Nathan Davis, percussion
Levy Lorenzo, percussion and electronics

Ross Karre, audio engineer
Nicholas Houfek, lighting designer

About Megan Steinberg
Megan Steinberg is an experimental composer and turntablist. She works with found sound, chance procedures, graphic & text scores, quietness, and microtonality. Megan is studying a PhD at Royal Northern College of Music, where she is the Lucy Hale Doctoral Composer in Association with Drake Music. Her project is focused on the creation of works for Disabled musicians, new instruments, and AI. She has composed for incredible performers including Riot Ensemble, Kathryn Williams, Heather Roche, Juice Vocal Ensemble, Distractfold, Apartment House, and Lore Lixenberg. In 2016, she was awarded the FI Williams Prize for Composition. In 2017, she was Composer in Residence at the Royal Holloway Picture Gallery. In 2022, she was an Artist in Residence at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with the Australian Art Orchestra and Composer Fellow at NEO Voice Festival, Los Angeles. She is currently Composer in Residence with CoMA London. Her music has been performed at Kings Place, IKLECTIK, Grachtenfestival, and Arts by the Sea Festival in Bournemouth.

About Robert Laidlow
Robert Laidlow’s “gigantically imaginative” (BBC Radio 3) music is concerned with discovering and developing new forms of musical expression through the relationship between advanced technology, scientific collaboration, and live performance. Recent work includes: Silicon for orchestra and artificial intelligence, featured in The New York Times and the New Scientist; the piano concerto ‘Warp’, which was awarded the KCL Ivan Juritz Prize for Modernism; and ‘Post-Singularity Songs’ for soprano and electronics. He is a Fellow in Composition at Jesus College, Oxford University, and from 2018-22 he was the PRiSM PhD Researcher in Artificial Intelligence with the BBC Philharmonic.

About Sam Salem
Sam Salem is an award-winning composer and artistic director. He creates audiovisual works for performers, electronics, and video which challenge traditional notions of concert presentation and instrumental virtuosity. His work is fundamentally psychogeopraphical, informed by site-specific research—the layers of myth and history that he uncovers form the building blocks of his work. He is a founding member of Distractfold Ensemble, co-director of the Another Sky Festival, and is currently Practitioner-in-Residence at the Warburg Institute. He has most recently written for the BBC Philharmonic, Weston Olencki, Noam Bierstone, and Linda Jankowska, and his debut album, London Triptych, is available from dFolds. He received his doctorate in composition from the University of Manchester in 2011 and is PRiSM Senior Lecturer in Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music.

About Hongshuo Fan
Hongshuo Fan ??? is a Chinese cross-disciplinary composer, new media artist, and creative programmer with a PhD in Electroacoustic Composition from the University of Manchester, currently a PDRA/research software engineer at RNCM PRiSM. His work has involved various real-time interactive multimedia contents, such as acoustic instruments, live electronics, generative visuals, light, and body movements. His research and creative interest focus on the fusion of traditional culture and cutting-edge technology in the form of contemporary art, and leveraging ML/AI to explore new avenues in music and art. His output spans chamber music, live interactive electronics, installations, and audio-visual works.

About Emily Howard
Described as “visionary” (The Times), Emily Howard’s distinctive music is notable for its granular use of instrumental color, powerful use of text, and inventive connections with shapes and processes. Works include Ombra/The Wernicke’s Area (Irish Museum of Modern Art); The Anvil (Manchester International Festival); Ada Lovelace: Imagining the Analytical Engine (Barbican Life Rewired); her opera To See The Invisible (Aldeburgh Festival); Four Musical Proofs and a Conjecture (New Scientist Live), Torus (BBC Proms) and Antisphere (London Symphony Orchestra / Sir Simon Rattle). Howard is founding director of PRiSM; she has received two British Composer Awards and has just been elected to the Royal Academy of Arts. Her works are published by Edition Peters. www.emilyhoward.com.  

About Zakiya Leeming
Zakiya Leeming is Artist and Producer in Residence at the Royal Northern College of Music’s Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music (PRiSM). Specializing in interdisciplinary collaboration, the composer is interrogating the role of AI in a creative practice through an ongoing series, and partnered with Oxford University Professor Paul Klenerman on a project exploring immune memory and music. Recent commissions include Riot Ensemble, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble Recherche, and Explore Ensemble. Selected for the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Composer Programme 2021-22 and London Philharmonic Orchestra Young Composer Programme 2022-23, Leeming’s work has been featured by The Guardian and BBC Radio 4.

About Bofan Ma
Bofan Ma is a Manchester-based composer-performer and intermedia researcher. Originally from China, he makes music that embodies a normalized, transnational creative identity, addressing issues around cultural bias, inclusion, and accessibility in the age of AI and machine learning. He has worked with ensembles/initiatives including Shanghai Conservatory Chinese Symphony Orchestra,?London Sinfonietta,?Distractfold, Psappha, ANU Productions Ireland, Ensemble X.y, Vonnegut Collective, Music Theatre Wales. His music has been heard across the globe, namely in the Shanghai Spring International Festival (China); Mise-en?International Festival (USA); Hearing Art Seeing Sound International Festival (Armenia); and Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Germany). Having completed a PhD at the Royal Northern College of Music in 2021, Bofan is currently the Post-doctoral Research Associate at the RNCM Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music (PRiSM). He is one of the co-founders of the composer collective The Incógnito Project, as well as Chair of the Manchester branch of the international Contemporary Music for All (CoMA) network.

About PRiSM
Founded in 2017, PRiSM has become one of the leading world centers for research in artificial intelligence and music. A unit of the Royal Northern College of Music, the Center brings together researchers across the creative arts and the sciences with a view to making a real contribution to society by developing new digital technology and creative practice that address fundamental questions about what it means to be human and creative today.  Uniquely positioned within a music conservatoire environment, PRiSM creates world premieres, from small chamber works and sound installations to large-scale orchestral works, created using such AI tools as the widely used PRiSM SampleRNN, an open-source software for neural audio synthesis, as well as techniques for automatic musical gesture recognition and score and text generation. PRiSM’s annual Future Music Festival has been featured by the BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times and more.

The list of PRiSM collaborators includes New Scientist, Manchester Science Festival, BBC Philharmonic, Barbican Centre, The University of Oxford, nonclassical, NMC Recordings, Riot Ensemble, Distractfold, BCMG, Contemporary Music for All (CoMA) Manchester, The National Archives, ANU Productions and The Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Warburg Institute, The Santa Fe Institute’s Music as Complex Adaptive Systems Working Group, The University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute and NOVARS Research Centre, and AHRC Research Network. Other important initiatives include the Oxford Vaccine Group, and the Lucy Hale Festival, focused on Disability and AI.

The founding directors of PRiSM are composer Emily Howard (Professor of Composition, RNCM) and mathematician Marcus du Sautoy (Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics, University of Oxford). They are joined by computer scientist David De Roure (Professor of e-Research, University of Oxford and Turing Fellow, The Alan Turing Institute) and composer Sam Salem (PRiSM Senior Lecturer in Composition).

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 credits: Emily Howard (PC: Chris McAndrew), Robert Laidlow (PC: Jonathan Slater), Megan Steinberg (PC: Sam Walton), Bofan Ma (PC: Lu Liu), Zakiya Leeming (PC: David John), Sam Salem (PC: Self Portrait), Hongshuo Fan (PC: Lina Yan), and David De Roure (PC: Sally-Anne Stewart)

###