Concert

Polyaspora

International Contemporary Ensemble / Samir Odeh-Tamimi / Jessie Cox / Aida Shirazi and many others

A collage with 40 pictures. These show various musicians from the International Contemporary Ensemble playing their instruments.

International Contemporary Ensemble © Digitice Media Team

Multiple perspectives offer multiple possibilities: this is the core idea behind “Polyaspora” at MaerzMusik, where the International Contemporary Ensemble will perform the “yet unheard,” including works by Charles Uzor, Samir Odeh-Tamimi, Aida Shirazi, Raven Chacon, Laure M. Hiendl, and Jessie Cox.

Recording

The concert by the International Contemporary Ensemble will be recorded by Deutschlandfunk Kultur and broadcasted on 21 March from 20:03.

 

Reading and Conversation: Composing While Black. Afrodiasporic New Music Today

Friday 22.3.,14:30
with Dr. Dr. Daniele Daude, Harald Kisiedu, George Lewis and voice recorded reading by Elaine Mitchener

 

Programmebooklet 17.3.2024

Multiple perspectives offer multiple possibilities. This seemingly simple core concept provides the starting point for the concert “Polyaspora” by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). Adrian Tchaikovsky’s 2021 science fiction novel “Shards of Earth” describes a future condition of human life throughout our galaxy in which there is no fixed abode, but only flows, from everywhere and in all directions: not a diaspora, but a polyaspora.

According to ICE Artistic Director George Lewis, this is already how our lives and our perception of the world are shaped today. This quality also applies to ICE itself, which Lewis describes as intercultural, intermedial and interdisciplinary, as well as conscious, collaborative, creolized, and connected, across borders of aesthetics, practices, gender, ethnicity, race, and transnational formations.

In this spirit, collaborating with the renowned Berlin-based Zafraan Ensemble, ICE is presenting two generations of Afrodiasporic Swiss composers, Charles Uzor and Jessie Cox, as well as works by major figures such as Samir Odeh-Tamimi, and younger voices such as Aida Shirazi, Raven Chacon, and Laure M. Hiendl. The aim of “Polyaspora” is to propose a new consciousness, a new identity for new music.

Programme

Laure M. Hiendl
String Quartet No. 1 (Tubular—Mondo) (2018)
for string quartet and live electronic

Jessie Cox
Existence Lies In-Between (2017)
for chamber ensemble

Raven Chacon
(Bury Me) Where The Lightning [Will] Never Find Me (2019)
for bass clarinet, violin and cello

Aida Shirazi
Crystalline Trees (2020)
for chamber ensemble

Samir Odeh-Tamimi
Philaki (2009)
for flute, clarinet, harp and string quartet

Charles Uzor
Go (Ballet imaginaire) (1999)
for seven instrumentalists
for clarinet, percussion, piano and string quartet

Cast

ICE - International Contemporary Ensemble
Zafraan Ensemble

Kazem Abdullah – conductor
Laure M. Hiendl – sound direction