The MCA Stage embarks on the second season of the three-year ensemble-in-residence with ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble) with three distinct concerts take place throughout the 2011-12 MCA Stage season. The first is Chance Encounters on October 5, a program that connects some of the most powerful and contrasting voices of our time, including works by John Cage, Morton Feldman, Pauline Oliveros, and Iannis Xenakis. This program is inspired by a chance encounter in 1950 between composers Morton Feldman and John Cage that stimulated a long and artistically productive friendship at the center of the late 20th-century experimental music scene in New York.

 

The Chance Encounters program is grounded by Concerto for Nine (1934) by Anton Webern, whose music maintained a balance of large scale and delicacy that inspired both Feldman and Cage. Cage is represented by his Imaginary Landscapes No. 4 for twelve radios and twenty-four operators, as well as a work that ICE arranged, titled 8'10". Morton Feldman's Routine Investigations (1976) for small chamber ensemble is a subtle piece that explores openness in musical space. The program presents a dramatic shift in perspective with the dense piece for large ensemble Thallien (1984) by Iannis Xenakis. Pauline Oliveros, who is known for her deeply intuitive music, is represented by her work for four duos of matching instruments, Double X (1979).

 

Steve Schick conducts and the artists give on-stage introductions to each work during the concert. Chance Encounters is part of the MCA Composers Stage series that highlights the MCA Stage's continued support of the burgeoning new and experimental music scene. 

 

John Cage (1912-1992) was an influential and controversial American composer of the 20th century, who rejected many aspects of traditional composition. His earliest compositions were a series of Varèse-inspired works, which he created in his own atonal system. Cage may be best known for Imaginary Landscape No. 4, completed in 1951, which limited the sources of sound to only a dozen radios. 
 

Morton Feldman (1927-1987) was an American pioneer of indeterminate music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers.  Feldman's works are characterized by quiet and slowly evolving music and recurring asymmetric patterns. Routine Investigations was made when he began notating precise rhythm and melodies.

 

The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) was founded in 2001, and over the past nine years has established itself as one of the leading musical ensembles of its generation as well as one of the most innovative young arts organizations in the US. ICE has created a pioneering performer/presenter model that sets a bold new standard for the future of music in the 21st century.