International Contemporary Ensemble: TUES@7

Consulting my records, I discovered that it has been quite some time since I last wrote about the International Contemporary Ensemble. Back in March of 2018, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra presented the world premiere performance of “… within the shifting grounds …,” written by Iranian composer Anahita Abbasi on a commission involving collaboration with Ensemble. Four Ensemble players were involved in preparing the performance, violinist Jennifer Curtis, bassoonist Rebekah Heller, trombonist Michael Lormand, and saxophonist Ryan Muncy, who was part of the on-stage ensemble. Unless I am mistaken, this was the first time that Ensemble musicians were involved in a San Francisco performance.

This month Ensemble will stream three performances as part of their TUES@7 series. These events provide Ensemble artists to reflect on past world premieres, pull back the curtain on upcoming works-in-process, and dig deeply into the digitice video archive to see how collaborations, new works, and sound creations have blossomed over the past 19 years. Each of this month’s events will have its own free streaming site, whose URL will be attached to the date of the performance in the following description of the planned offerings:

March 16: This will be the first program based on the Radical Pairings initiative presented as part of the Music at the Anthology (MATA) mission to present, support, and commission the music of early career composers. The idea of “pairing” not only brings together two stylistically diverse composers but also pairs older works with newly-commissioned miniatures, intended as companion pieces. The coupling for this program will involve Maurizio Azzan’s solo guitar composition “Geometrie nelle mani” with “Deliberate (Afraid of Nothing),” composed for percussion and electronics by Yvette Janine Jackson. Each of these composers will also be represented by a newly-written solo work. The performers will be percussionist Colleen Bernstein and guitarist Jordan Dodson.

March 23: The second Radical Pairings offering will couple composers Evan Williams and Bethany Younge. Saxophonist Ryan Muncy will play two Williams compositions, “Rock Steady” and “recent for loops.” Younge’s compositions are for voice and DIY instruments. She will play the instruments, joined by soprano Charlotte Mundy.

March 30: The final program of the month is entitled “Home.” Composer-performer Brittany J. Green will work with flutist Isabel Lepanto Gleicher and harpist Nuiko Wadden. The program will focus on the different meanings of “home.” Those reflections will be realized through soundscape samples, improvised pieces, and segments of recorded interviews.

Note that “7” refers to Eastern time, which means that performances will begin for San Francisco readers at 4 p.m.