2021-2022 Season Commissions

2022-2024 Season Commissions

Bios

2021-2023 Season Commissions
Lesley Mok – Drummer, Composer, and Improviser (she/her/hers)
Lesley Mok is a drummer, composer, and improviser based in Brooklyn, NY. Interested in the ways social conditions shape our beings, Lesley’s work focuses on transposing, augmenting, and overacting humanness to explore ideas about normalcy, alienness, and privilege. She explores this by writing in a way that subverts traditional instrumental roles, often utilizing extreme ranges and unconventional timbres, while creating a context that allows for simultaneously different musical perspectives. By maintaining an agile and improvisatory approach, Lesley creates fantastical and evocative sound worlds through the use of dissonance.

Collaborating with artists such as Jen Shyu, Cory Smythe, and Tomeka Reid, Lesley has honed a unique voice as a drummer and percussionist by employing a dynamic range of timbres and orchestrations. She is deeply inspired by the Cuban rumba tradition, often playing in sparse counterpoint to others in an ensemble and choosing to highlight choice moments in the music. Her ongoing explorations with composition and improvisation are most notably documented in her nine-piece improvising chamber ensemble, The Living Collection. 

Lesley's work has been recognized by many performing ensembles and organizations. She is the winner of the 2021 ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Composer Award, the 2021 Van Lier Fellowship at the Asian American Arts Alliance, and a participant in JACK Studio 2021.

Lesley values the opportunity to develop intimate musical connections with her peers both in the U.S. and abroad. As a member of the inaugural cohort of Mutual Mentorship for Musicians (M3) and an alumnus of the Banff Program for Jazz & Creative Music and the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, she recognizes artists’ international codependency for a thriving creative environment and hopes to build understanding through mutual support. 

Lesley holds a B.A. and M.A. in Contemporary Performance from Berklee College of Music. Learn more at www.lesleymok.com.

Kevin Ramsay – Sound Engineer, Composer, Creator (he/him/his)
Kevin Ramsay is a composer, producer, recording/mixing/mastering/sound engineer, and musician on several critically acclaimed international albums. Brooklyn-born and based, Ramsay’s work focuses primarily on theoretical, practical aspects of sound recording/reproduction with unpredictable pairings of acoustic and electronic instruments. Kevin’s current works explore new ways to capture, mix, and process immersive audio for playback, on multichannel sound systems. In addition to serving as the Lead Sound Engineer at Harvestworks Digital Media Center, he continues to collaborate with a variety of international artists committed to using sound as their main creative medium. Kevin has worked with notable artist such as Michael Byron, Henry Threadgil, Art Jones, Joan Jonas, Pauline Kim-Harris and Conrad Harris (String Noise), Anne Tardos, Danilio Correale, Maria Grand, Prince Harvey, Emilio Vavarella, Malik Ameer Crumpler, Daniel Belquer, Jon-Carlos Evans, and many others. Learn more at www.kevinramsaysound.com.

Mazz Swift – Violin, Vox, Freestyle Composition Artist (she/they)
Mazz Swift engages audiences worldwide with their signature weaving of improvisation and composition. They are a violinist, composer, conductor, and educator whose works include commissions by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the University of Delaware, the Canales Project, and the Blaffer Foundation. Mazz is a 2019 Jerome Hill Fellow and 2021 United States Artist Fellow, working on several projects, all of which are centered around protest songs, spirituals and the Ghanaian concept of ‘Sankofa’: looking back to learn how to move forward. Learn more at www.mazzmuse.com 

Chris Ryan Williams – Interdisciplinary Artist, Composer/Performer (he/him/his)
Chris Ryan Williams is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based between NYC and LA, often found collaborating with contemporary improvisers and experimentalists. His work explores the dyad of ancestral trauma and power existing in all Black Americans. These investigations have led to the creation of the modular piece I Ain’t Got No Spare (2019), which interweaves performance, homemade electronics, sound, and projection and was shown at Clockshop and Shatto Gallery through CultureHub’s Refest 2019. Highlights of other recent projects include mehahn (2018), a theatrical meditation on grief and hereditary dissonance created alongside director Natalia Lassalle-Morillo; Sans Soleil, a duo with Patrick Shiroishi on Astral Spirits (2021); On The Platform (2020), a collaboration with percussionist Booker Stardrum and animator Miranda Javid which premiered in the Netherlands at West Den Haag; and Of Yours (2021), a modular collage piece recontextualizing Black voices. Williams has received grants and/or been in residence with BANFF Centre for the Arts, Foundation of Contemporary Arts, CultureHub, Atlantic Center for the Arts, WasteLAnd, and others. Learn more at www.chriswilliamssound.com. 

2022-2024 Season Commissions
Sandra Kluge – Tap Percussionist, Improviser, Human Being (she/her/hers)
Sandra Kluge is a tap percussionist born in Germany, based in Brooklyn, and performing and teaching internationally. Her performance highlights include Thomas Marek's show NOLA, the Tap Dance Days festival, Swiss Tap Days, Düsseldorf Photo Weekend, Symphony Space, LaGuardia PAC, Judson Church, The Duke on 42nd St, Basilica Hudson, and many more. Sandra has been invited to teach at renowned facilities such as tanzhaus nrw, tap club, and Soundspace Philadelphia, and to be a teaching artist in residence at Thomas Marek's Studio Footprints. She is an alumna of the Art Omi Music Fellowship Program. Sandra was first introduced to tap at the age of 10 by her mother. In the following years, she studied with renowned teachers such as Barbara Duffy, Sebastian Weber, Pia Neises, Derick Grant, Heather Cornell, and many more. She graduated magna cum laude from Daniel Luka's tap apprenticeship S.O.N.T.I. Learn more at www.sandrakluge.com.

Bonita Oliver – Multidisciplinary Artist, Improvisor (she/her/hers)
Bonita Oliver utilizes multiple mediums as a performance artist and improviser. Her work is about transitions – the process of moving through. Bonita creates deeply emotional, body-in-space, concept art through voice, music, environmental soundscapes, and movement with a motivation to heal personal and ancestral trauma and make way for discovery and connection. Her mission is to engage the community through ritual, co-creation, education, and activism. Bonita’s process is in the moment and responds to stimuli – be it internal or external – through embodiment and interaction. Her live works exhibit this process in real time. Bonita (who also performs under the name French Leave) is originally from Springfield, Massachusetts. She is an actress, playwright, multi award winning filmmaker, member of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG/AFTRA), New York Women in Film and Television (NYWIFT), Women of Color Unite (WOCU), and a 2021 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council/Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation (LMCC/UMEZ) grants recipient for Seeking Truth - a virtual interactive experience examining the real and imagined voices of Sojourner Truth. Learn more at https://bonitaoliver.com/. 

Cleo Reed – Music Producer, Interdisciplinary Artist (she/they)
Born and raised in NYC and Uptown DC, Cleo Reed is a student of black underground sound and intention. Cleo reaches deeply into their own lineage and uses it as a reference for their work in both music and multimedia art. They produce and design soundscapes, compositional and popular music works, in addition to mixing, mastering, and editing their own music and visuals. Recently, Cleo sharpened their electrical engineering skills by building their own 10-inch studio monitors and programming a video art plug-in. To cradle these crafts, they look at their histories, completing courses and personal research studies centered around DSP, Electroacoustics, and guitar pedal design. At 19, they named themselves after Cleophus, their great-great grandmother and a fellow Aquarius. They possess a deep commitment to women and non-binary people within the communities they inhabit. Whether underground or academic, experimental or popular, they express musicianship guided by my radiance, femininity and cyclical traumas. As a result, they have attracted and had the privilege of leaning on a myriad of talented women who possess niche instruments and fields of creativity.  — Ella Moore or “Cleo” for Short. Learn more at https://cleoforshort.cargo.site/. 

Sylvain Souklaye – Multimodal Artist (he/him/his)
Sylvain Souklaye is a New York based multi-modal French artist obsessed with sampling intimacies about people who don't belong to a determinate identity, gender, class, color, or nationality. Self-taught, he began performing with vandalism in Lyon, and then with intimate happenings, radio experimentation and action poetry. He later developed digital art installations using field recording techniques as a narrative layer while pursuing his writer’s path. Among his best known pieces are la blackline, a 5-year durational radio performance about socio-economic survival and urban absurdity; le déserteur, a digital art installation dwelling on the notion of abandonment; TME, a docudrama performance exploring self-inflicted amnesia and resilience; and MIGRANT MARKET, a remake of the slave market updated for the uber economy. Sylvain Souklaye’s methods characteristically involve intense physical acts as well as the use of unsettling intimacy. Learn more at www.sylvainsouklaye.com.

background of program

The International Contemporary Ensemble has had a long history of collaboration with artists as well as calls for proposals/scores (see info about our past programs – icelab & iceCOMMONS AiR). Throughout this past year, the Ensemble sought out new ways to make the process more inviting to welcome as many applicants as possible. After holding an open forum in October 2020 which was focused on how to make calls for works more inclusive and to reimagine the open call process, there was an overwhelming desire to humanize the process and hone in on collaborating with artists. The Ensemble took feedback from this forum to build a new submission form.

“Our annual call for works became a broader invitation to collaborate with the Ensemble, open to creators from any discipline,” says Artistic Director Ross Karre. “We are thrilled to work with these eight artists over the next few years. Their work will help to expand the boundaries of our collective artistic practice. Their selection by the panel is a welcome byproduct of moving away from restricting identifiers such as composer, improviser, sound artist, performer, etc, understanding that many creative artists work across and in-between these markers. We focused more on asking about artists’ goals, their practice, and how they can expand their work with our organization.” 

“There were so many extraordinary submissions to the program this year,” says Executive Director Jennifer Kessler. “We hope to get to know more about all of the applicants. All of us at the International Contemporary Ensemble are excited to work with these eight incredible artists over the next two seasons.”

Review panelists included Alice Teyssier, Nuiko Wadden, David Byrd-Marrow, and Darius Jones. Read more about the winners below. Two artists from each cohort are supported through a generous partnership with the Jerome Foundation. 

Photo Credits (L-R):
Lesley Mok by Gaya Feldheim Schorr, Kevin Ramsay by Asukaya Bailey, Mazz Swift by nisha sondhe photography, and Chris Ryan Williams by Katherine Pekala.
Sandra Kluge by Alexey Konkov, Bonita Oliver by Anya Roz, Cleo Reed by Cressida Fletcher, and Sylvain Souklaye by Marcin Sz.

Performances and commissioning activities during the 2020-21 concert season are made possible by the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, A.N. and Pearl G. Barnett Family Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Amphion Foundation, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Pacific Harmony Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, The Casement Fund, BMI Foundation, The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation as well as public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council for the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the Illinois Arts Council Agency. The International Contemporary Ensemble was the Ensemble in Residence of the Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology from 2018 - 2021. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the International Contemporary Ensemble.