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Building on 15 years of collaboration with the ensemble, Gilded Wings (for two clarinets and strings) revealed a new maturity in Fujikura's always enjoyable music.

In fragments and miniatures, the ensemble pieces were most satisfying, allowing Widmann not to build arguments but define subjects by contrast, showing a quick wit and a flair for suspense. 

London's new Centre for Music has much to learn from the Big Apple's mistakes.

The opera can be summed up by a line sung by the Countess in Act 4: “You’re killing her with all this noise.”

Wendy Whelan is proving that there’s plenty of life for older dancers if there are new works that can make use of their special abilities and lifetime of experience.

The musical objects ranged from Phyllis Chen’s custom music-box to a Chinese food take-out box that sounded as if birds were chirping inside. Occasionally, the amalgam of twinkling noises was joined by a titter of laughter from the fascinated audience.

Throughout ten surprising and impassioned minutes, the musicians, conducted by harpsichordist Jacob Greenberg, oscillated between the unhurried harpsichord chorale and the furious upside-down bowing of the bass and alternated long soupy phrases with delicate, supernatural trills. 

On the second night of the Sweet Thunder Electroacoustic Music Festival, Brooklyn based International Contemporary Ensemble presented a parade of short works by some of the genre’s stalwarts as well as a few newcomers.

Monday evening at Lincoln Center’s annual White Light Festival, audience-goers were sucked into the multi-media universe of Michel van der Aa. The concert, which featured four of Mr. van der Aa’s compositions, took place in the darkened ballroom of the Manhattan Center, running to a bit over an hour with no intermission. Three solo works, each about ten minutes long, were paired with the U.S.

It is difficult to write comparatively about Pauline Oliveros’ music. Typically, when listening to new music, the ear begins to chart differences and repetitions, and the way these are structured with dynamics, pitch, and texture.

The Mostly Mozart Festival continued Sunday afternoon with another program of new music – quite literally, as all were world premières – from two more young composers. Tyshawn Sorey, in addition to being a composer, is a jazz instrumentalist and improviser, though the distinction between composer and improviser quickly breaks down in his practice.

I was fortunate to hear one of the best hours of new music in recent memory from ICElab, a collaboration between the International Contemporary Ensemble and a select group of young composers, currently hosted at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart festival.

The ceiling at the Clark Studio Theater was hung with white gauzy curtains descending all the way to the floor. The wispy fabric served as dividers between four stages, on which were arranged different combinations of instruments.

International Contemporary Ensemble’s debut London concert was a small-scale affair, tucked away in Hall 2 of Kings Place on a Sunday afternoon. But this talented group still gave us a great taste of why they’re such big news in the United States, with a pleasantly varied programme of new and recent music curated for them by Londoner and long-time collaborator Dai Fujikura.

When it comes to contemporary music, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) has made great strides in their ten-year history, premièing over 500 compositions and performing not only in New York and Chicago but in venues all over the world.