Composing While Black: ICE collaborates with AACM members Thurman Barker, Adegoke Steve Colson, Iqua Colson and Reggie Nicholson

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

Composing While Black: ICE collaborates with AACM
members Thurman Barker, Adegoke Steve Colson, Iqua
Colson and Reggie Nicholson

International Contemporary Ensemble Performs Works by and with
members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative
Musicians (AACM) on March 22 at NYU Skirball

iceorg.org

March 11, 2025 (New York, NY) — International Contemporary Ensemble performs works by and with four composer-performers from the New York Chapter of the renowned experimental music collective, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), in Composing While Black: ICE collaborates with AACM members Thurman Barker, Adegoke Steve Colson, Iqua Colson and Reggie Nicholson on Saturday, March 22, 2025 at 8:00?p.m. at NYU Skirball.

Called a “musical power couple” by The New York Times, composer-pianist Adegoke Steve Colson and composer-vocalist Iqua Colson join ICE for a performance of their works that focus on facets of the human experience and illuminate social issues, including Adegoke’s Counterpoints 1 & 2 and Instant Death of the City, and Iqua’s Days Go By and Atrocities. In 2023, ICE premiered Adegoke Steve Colson’s Mirrors, for baritone voice and ensemble.

Percussionist-composer Thurman Barker, recipient of a 2022 NYSCA award for composition and an original member of the AACM, joins ICE for a performance of his South Side Suite and Pandemic Fever. Barker composes music for ensembles large and small, moving beyond genre to reflect the human experience itself. 

A member of the AACM since 1979, percussionist-composer Reggie Nicholson joins ICE for a performance of his Variations of a Thought. Nicholson has twice been nominated for the Alpert Award in the Arts, and his compositions exhibit a keen awareness of sound, space, and timbre.  

Since its founding in 1965, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) has exercised an internationally celebrated influence on the development of experimental music. Now in its 60th year, with chapters in Chicago and New York, the composite output of AACM members has explored new and influential ideas about timbre, sound, collectivity, extended technique, instrumentation, intermedia, computer music technologies, installations, and kinetic sculptures. 

This performance is made possible through lead support from the Arlene & Larry Dunn Fund for Afrodiasporic Music.

Concert Information
Composing While Black: ICE meets The Colsons, Thurman Barker, Reggie Nicholson
Saturday, March 22, 2025 at 7:30?p.m.
Pre-concert discussion with the composers TBC
NYU Skirball | 566 LaGuardia Pl | New York, NY 10012
Tickets: $50
Link: https://iceorg.org/events/2025/skirball-march 

Concert Program:
Adegoke Steve Colson - Counterpoints 1&2 (2017)
Thurman Barker -  Pandemic Fever (2019)
Iqua Colson - Days Go By (2015)
Thurman Barker - South Side Suite (2017)
Adegoke Steve Colson - Instant Death of the City (1974)
Reggie Nicholson - Variations of a Thought (2024)
Iqua Colson - Atrocities (2022)

Artists:
Adegoke Steve Colson, piano
Iqua Colson, voice
Reggie Nicholson, percussion
Thurman Barker, percussion

with International Contemporary Ensemble
     Alice Teyssier, flute
     Toyin Spellman-Díaz, oboe
     Alexander Davis, bassoon
     Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet
     Daniel Lippel, electric guitar
     Jacqueline Kerrod, harp
     Modney, violin
     Dara Hankins, cello

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 2024-25 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, Jerome Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Robert D. Bielecki Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, The Arlene and Larry Dunn Fund for Afrodiasporic Music, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Amphion Foundation, Cheswatyr Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Siemens Musikstiftung, New Music USA, 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. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the International Contemporary Ensemble.

Photo Credits (clockwise): Adegoke Steve Colson (PC: Chris Drukker), Iqua Colson (PC: Chris Drukker), Reggie Nicholson (PC: R.I. Sutherland-Copland), Thurman Barker (PC: N/A)

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