Ensemble plans ICE Fest for Everyman
Entertainment
The Chicago Sun-Times
Published: September 11, 2006
BY MARY WISNIEWSKI Staff Reporter
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Chamber music usually is performed in genteel settings -- in orchestra halls or churches, with the audience sitting quietly and not debating the musicians. The International Contemporary Ensemble, however, wants a simpler, less pretentious encounter with its listeners -- so it's performing the fourth Chicago ICE Fest Tuesday through Sept. 18 in seven neighborhood bars.
"We've done bars before, but this is our first week of bars," said Claire Chase, 28, executive director and flutist for the chamber group, which is dedicated to performing contemporary music. She said the ensemble hopes to play to both regular fans and people who walk in off the street.
"We really love to see brand new faces, people who have never experienced contemporary music before," Chase said. "Sometimes, if you're hearing it in a bar with a beer in your hand, it's less intimidating than if you bought a $25 ticket."
The setting also makes it easier for people to give an honest response to the music, said Chase. "The wonderful thing about a bar is they can come up and say, 'I hated that.' And I can ask, 'Why?'"
The group was co-founded in 2001 in Chicago by Chase and composer Huang Ruo.
The ensemble now consists of 30 musicians, with an average age of 27, who are graduates of both the Oberlin and Juilliard schools of music. Chase said her fellow musicians are passionate about bringing contemporary music to the world, even if means giving up softer gigs teaching in music schools or playing for large orchestras.
ICE gives more than 60 concerts a year in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and abroad, and has collaborated with a number of contemporary composers, including George Crumb, David Lang and Mario Davidovsky.
Chase said not everyone likes a new, challenging piece of music on the first listen -- sometimes it takes a second listen, or a third. She said this has always been the case with new music -- Beethoven's "Fidelio" opera was booed and derided as dissonant when it premiered.
She's optimistic that contemporary music will find a place in American culture.
"There are so many young, talented, dedicated people who want to make this their lives," Chase said. "We're passionate about contemporary music. We want to speak to the world."
The September festival has a different program for each night, with covers ranging from $5 to $10. It includes a performance at the HotHouse with a composition by John Cage for piano, percussion and radio.
Other locations on the program include the Velvet Lounge and the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge. The Green Mill program will feature two premieres of eight-handed piano pieces by Chicago composers Kirsten Broberg and David Smooke.
The festival closes at Katerina's on Irving Park, with the ensemble's annual "pops" concert of anything written before 1940. The open-ended concert will include Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 and ICE-commissioned arrangements of standard repertoire for unusual instrumental combinations.
Guest artists from the Chicago Symphony and the Lyric Opera will make cameo appearances.
