Young American composer Ashley Fure asks, "What motivates a sound, what pulls it forward?  Can we conjure, outside tonality, that inexplicable sense of craving that seems to tug ti towards do?"

Ashley Fure is attracting international attention—and for good reason.  Growing up in Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula, Fure starting writing early. “I was composing out of a renegade spirit,” she says, “wildly, and without rules.”  Since then, she has studied with Helmut Lachenmann, Chaya Czernowin, Brian Ferneyhough, and others, but she has retained her independent voice and energetic style.  Fure is inspired by subjects as disparate as neurological disease, the carnal impulses of animals, and the physicality of performing musicians.  The winner of the coveted Kranichsteiner Prize at the 2014 Darmstadt Festival, Fure will return to Darmstadt with ICE in 2016 for the premiere of a kinetic sculpture opera called The Force of Things, an excerpt of which will have its first hearing in this Portrait, which is her first major retrospective.

ICE
David Fulmer, conductor

Program:
Wire and Wool for solo cello and electronics (2009)
Soma for sextet (2012)
Albatross for large ensemble and electronics (2014)
Something to Hunt for mixed septet (2014)
Etudes from the Anthropocene (2016) for two sopranos, ensemble, and electronics WORLD PREMIERE

With the friendly support of:

Project Lead: Ross Karre

Etudes from the Anthropocene (excerpted from The Force of Things) is made possible by generous commitments from the International Contemporary Ensemble: First Page Program, University of Michigan Office of Research, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Dartmouth College Provost’s Office Seed Funding Program, Miller Theater at Columbia University (NYC), and Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (IMD). This project was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from New Music USA project grants. With the friendly support of Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung.