Concert
Polyaspora
International Contemporary Ensemble / Samir Odeh-Tamimi / Jessie Cox / Aida Shirazi and many others
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.
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
This engagement is supported in part by Mid Atlantic Arts through USArtists International, a program in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding.
With the support of the