International Contemporary Ensemble, Steven Schick, Jeffrey Gavett & Kai Wessel
Biography International Contemporary Ensemble, Steven Schick, Jeffrey Gavett & Kai Wessel
Steven Schick
Percussionist, conductor, and author Steven Schick was born in Iowa and raised in a farming family. Hailed by Alex Ross in the New Yorker as, “one of our supreme living virtuosos, not just of percussion but of any instrument,” he has championed contemporary percussion music by commissioning or premiering more than one hundred-fifty new works. The most important of these have become core repertory for solo percussion. Schick was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 2014.
Steven Schick is the artistic director of the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus and the San Francisco Con- temporary Music Players. As a conductor, he has appeared with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony, Ensemble Modern, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and the Asko/Schönberg Ensemble.
Schick’s publications include a book, “The Percussionist’s Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams,” and many articles. He has released numerous recordings including the 2010 “Percussion Works of Iannis Xenakis,” and its companion, “The Complete Early Percussion Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen” in 2014 (both on Mode). He received the “Diapason d’Or” as conductor (Xenakis Ensemble Music with ICE) and the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, as percussionist (Stockhausen), each for the best new music release of 2015.
Steven Schick is Distinguished Professor of Music and holds the Reed Family Presidential Chair at the University of California, San Diego. He was music director of the 2015 Ojai Festival, and starting in 2017, will be co-artistic director, with Claire Chase, of the Summer Music Program at the Ban Centre.
Jeffrey Gavett
called a “brilliantly agile singer” by the New York Times, has collaborated with a broad array of artists, including ICE, Meredith Monk, New Juilliard Ensemble, Roomful of Teeth, SEM Ensemble, Ensemble Signal, Talea Ensemble, and his own ensembles Ekmeles and loadbang. Theatrical appearances include Rudolf Komorous’s Nonomiya and Petr Kotik’s Master-Pieces at New Opera Days Ostrava in the Czech Republic, Annie Dorsen’s Yesterday Tomorrow at the Holland Festival, in France, and Croatia, and Matt Marks’s Mata Hari on the 2017 Prototype Festival. Mr. Gavett holds degrees from Westminster Choir College and Manhattan School of Music.
Kai Wessel
The Hamburg-born countertenor Kai Wessel studied music theory, composition and voice in Lübeck (D) and historical informed performance practice in Basel (CH) and Hilversum (NL). He received numerous prizes and fellowships and has performed concerts, operas, radio broadcasts, and sung in more than 90 CD recordings working with conductors such as Ph. Herreweghe, G. Leonhard, T. Koopman, N. Harnoncourt, M. Haselböck, M. Schneider, H.W. Henze, A. Tamayo, S. Cambreling, P. Rundel, H. Holliger, E. Pomárico, K. Nagano, and others. As one of the leading countertenors, Kai Wessel has performed at music festivals and opera houses all over the world (Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Stuttgart, Nice, Barcelona, Salzburg, Tokyo, San Francisco). A number of contemporary composers such as M. Kagel, H. Holliger, K. Huber, I. Mundry, C. Czernowin, G.F. Haas, J. Widmann and M. Pintscher have written parts and works for him. Kai Wessel is Professor for Voice and Historical Performance Practice at the University of Cologne for Music and Dance. He also teaches Voice and Contemporary Vocal Literature at the University of Bern.
International Contemporary Ensemble
The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is an artist collective committed to transforming the way music is created and experienced. As performer, curator, and educator, ICE explores how new music intersects with communities across the world. The ensemble’s 35 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. Emerging composers have anchored ICE’s programming since its founding in 2001, and the group’s recordings and dig- ital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music’s present.
ICE has received the American Music Center’s Trail- blazer Award and the Chamber Music America/AS- CAP Award for Adventurous Programming, and was also named Musical America Worldwide’s Ensemble of the Year 2014. The group currently serves as artists in residence at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ Mostly Mozart Festival, and previously led a five-year residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. ICE has been featured at the Ojai Music Festival since 2015, and has appeared at festivals abroad such as Acht Brücken Cologne and Musica nova Helsinki. Other recent performance stages include the Park Avenue Armory, The Stone, ice floes at Greenland’s Diskotek Sessions, and boats on the Amazon River.
New initiatives include OpenICE, made possible with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which offers free concerts and related program- ming wherever ICE performs, and enables a working process with composers to unfold in public settings.
DigitICE catalogues the ensemble’s performances in a free online streaming video library. ICE’s First Page program is a commissioning consortium that fosters close collaborations between performers, composers, and listeners as new music is developed. EntICE, a side-by-side youth program, places ICE musicians within youth orchestras as they premiere new com- missioned works together. Inaugural EntICE partners include Youth Orchestra Los Angeles and The People’s Music School in Chicago. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for ICE.
