Kolot Ensemble (“voices”) was born in 2006 when a group of young and talented musicians from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music discovered a shared passion for contemporary compositions. The ensemble emerged out of a desire to give expression to this extraordinary body of work with its wealth of styles and intricate musical and cultural influences. The mission of Kolot Ensemble is to become a voice to largely unknown new music by bringing it to the attention of wider audiences.
The music performed by Kolot Ensemble encompasses early 20th century and recent compositions. Its repertoire is diverse and challenging, with a focus on music written by Jewish and Israeli composers. Kolot Ensemble’s programs are therefore uniquely positioned to combine solo and chamber pieces, creating musical experiences which journey through a multiplicity of styles and dynamic combinations.
The Ensemble is currently working on different programs of contemporary music, including several world premieres. In April 2008 the Ensemble performed in Carnegie Hall as part of the David Krakauer Workshop: Exploring Klezmer. Other performances have included collaborations with the Melton Center for Jewish Studies and the School of Music at Ohio State University. In June 2009 Kolot Ensemble will perform as part of the American Composers Alliance Summer Festival and the Institute & Festival for Contemporary Performance at Mannes College the New School for Music.
In recognition of the importance of providing a platform for up and coming young composers, Kolot Ensemble welcomes commissioned works.
The aspirations of Kolot Ensemble are matched by the talent and track record of its young members. They are:
Melissa Block, singer, student at Indiana University, was a soloist in the Metropolitan Youth Chorale of New York, and as Barbarina in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro at Indiana University;
Robert Spady, clarinetist, doctoral student and associate instructor at Indiana University, was a soloist with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra;
Gerardo Ubaghs, violinist, Artists Diploma from Reina Sofía in Madrid, graduate student at Indiana University, first prize-winner in the International String Competition in Shanghai;
Véronique Mathieu, violinist, doctoral student at Indiana University, first prize winner of Canadian Music Competition, Clermont-Pepin Music Competition, winner of Canada Council Bank of Instruments Competition;
Jung-Min Shin, violist, doctoral student at Indiana University, Associate Concertmaster of Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, Artist in-Residence at University of Evansville as a member of Eykamp String Quartet;
Yotam Baruch, cellist, Master’s degree from the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, doctoral student at Indiana University, winner of the chamber and solo competition at the Tel-Aviv Academy of Music; and
Yael Manor, pianist, Master’s degree from the Tel-Aviv Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, doctoral student and associate instructor at Indiana University, founder and director of Kolot Ensemble.
Kolot Ensemble is endorsed by the Borns Jewish Studies Program and the Institute for Jewish Culture and the Arts at Indiana University; The Johnstone Fund for New Music; and the Office of Cultural Affairs, Consulate General of Israel in New York
IFCP has started! An inspiring opening workshop with Joel Lester began the Institute and tonight Marc Ponthus will perform his eagerly awaited
Territory X:
voyage of immanence
Continuous Performance
A multi-media event with Intermittent video-collage & semiotext with music:
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Robert Schumann and Outis.
With the participation of Sam Muglia, video artist, Khatera Hakimi as Eurydice-becoming and Rachel Barber, Marina Garde, Liana Lane, Ning Yu.
All forms of art are forms of resistance, of dissent, and of becoming.
It becomes in its existence-becomings, a movement away from territoriality, a seismic event that traverses immanence. It intuits pure power. It intuits unbounded and savage power, a pure energy of existence, an outset, a conception, a beginning-becoming, an energy-creating that is vital and absolute, that needs no object, no purpose, no resolution, that creates nothing, that is everything. ([in as much as it is outside of everything, and that it is, in infinite multiplicities, outside what is everything as well as outside the outside of everything]).
I will say that if performance of music is not becoming, it is nothing. And if it is becoming, it is, by nature, dissent, and it is, by necessity, resistance.
Performance of music, and, more surprisingly, performance of contemporary music, as differentiated from other performance arts, is too often, and strangely, akin to representation, as a late recurrence of the long error that representation enact(ed) in the history of thought, literature, art and social constructions. As regarding performance, it is representation as both a wide reaching and reductive intangible, as well as the simple representation of a score. But mostly, I am speaking of representation as it fundamentally intertwines with, and plausibly establishes classical thought, or how Michel Foucault, with a piercing fulgurance, reveals it into a particular and unforgiving light within the signposts of Cervantes and the Marquis de Sade. Friedrich Nietzsche, free from the tyranny of classical representation, and long after the Marquis de Sade, said that “Man darf vielleicht den ganzen Zarathustra unter die Musik rechnen” (the whole of Zarathustra may be reckoned as music).
To attempt an understanding of what performance can be, or to intuit performance as the emergence of becoming(s), I will attempt to open a larger perspective. Any idea of truth is of little interest here, whether we are speaking of transcendental truth or a kind of truth that could relate to a notated text or score. The idea of truth has a similar position as the idea of representation in relation with identity. It is dependent on identity and its primacy. But truth and representation move apart when representation is constructed in shifting multiplicities and interlocks into defined stratums of classical thought. Truth depends as well on, and resembles, an etymological system, that would have, fundamentally, little to do with music. Music performance is clearly more vulnerable to representation, and makes truth appear naively determined.
The idea that thought and performance can be connected, through intuition at least as much as through reason, intuiting thought as performance, as well as intuiting performance as thought, the idea of thinking a performance, is a necessary crucible of the performing event. And a performing event, if it is an event, is a pure event, where even performing is disintegrated. It is the projection of a charge of strident signs, a virtual and unbounded semiotization that generates volatile fears and savagery, and demolishes irrelevance.
IFCP Performance and Workshop Schedule
June 11, 2009
Institute and Festival for Contemporary Performance (IFCP)
June 16–24, 2009
Marc Ponthus, Founder/Director
Allen Blustine, Associate Director
Admission:
• $20
• $10 for students
• $8 for individual master class or lecture, please email ifcp@newschool.edu to reserve a seat
• Student performances are free of charge
• Tickets are available at the door beginning one hour prior to each event
Performance and Workshop Schedule:
Monday June 15, 2009
3:00 PM Workshop with Joel Lester, Strings and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall 3rd Floor
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
11:00 AM Workshop with Aleck Karis, Piano and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall 3rd Floor
3:00 PM Workshop with Jennifer Grim, Wind Instruments and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall, 3rd Floor
8:00 PM – Territory X: Continuous Performance
With Intermittent Video Collage & Semiotext
Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Robert Schumann, and Outis
Artist Talk after the performance with Marc Ponthus and Mohammed Hussein (visual artist)
Artist: Marc Ponthus, piano
Location: Mannes Concert Hall, 150 West 85th Street, NYC
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
11:00 AM Workshop with Joel Lester, Strings and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall 3rd Floor
3:00 PM Workshop with Matthew Gold, Percussion and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall, 3rd Floor
8:00 PM - Richard Wernick’s Second Suite for Cello (NY premiere), Gunther Schuller’s Fantasy for cello solo, Donald Martino’s Parisonatina, Ralph Shapey’s Soli and Solo, Duo, Trio, Roger Sessions’s Six Pieces, and Elliott Carter’s Figment #1
Artist Talk after the performance with Richard Wernick and Joel Krosnick
Artist: Joel Krosnick, cello
Location: Mannes Concert Hall, 150 West 85th Street, NYC
Thursday, June 18, 2009
11:00 AM Workshop with Joel Krosnick, Strings and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall, 3rd Floor
3:00 PM Workshop with Joel Krosnick, Strings and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall, 3rd Floor
Friday, June 19, 2009
11:00 AM Workshop with Allen Blustine, Wind Instruments and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall, 3rd Floor
3:00 PM Workshop with Marc Ponthus, Piano and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall, 3rd Floor
8:00 PM – Igor Stravinsky’s Élégie, Elliott Carter’s Rhapsodic Musings, Bela Bartók’s Melodia (from solo sonata), Donald Martino’s Romanza and Fantasy-Variations, Gyorgy Kurtag’s Signs Games and Messages, Steven Gerber’s Fantasy, and Earl Kim’s Seven Caprices
Artist: Rolf Schulte, unaccompanied violin
Location: NYU’s Frederick Loewe Theater, 35 West 4th Street, NYC
Saturday, June 20, 2009
11:00 AM Workshop with Matthew Gold, Percussion and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall, 3rd Floor
3:00 PM Workshop with Rolf Schulte, Strings and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall, 3rd Floor
Sunday, June 21, 2009
12:00 PM Workshop with Marc Ponthus, Piano and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall, 3rd Floor
3:00 PM Workshop with Jennifer Grim, Wind Instruments and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall, 3rd Floor
8:00 PM – Works by George Crumb, Anton Webern, David Sanford and Davis
Artists: IFCP Ensemble, Kolot Ensemble, Guest Artist, Matthew Gold, and IFCP participants
Location: NYU’s Frederick Loewe Theater, 35 West 4th Street, NYC
Monday, June 22, 2009
11:00 AM Workshop with Allen Blustine, Wind Instruments and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall, 3rd Floor
3:00 PM Workshop with Rolf Schulte, Strings and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall, 3rd Floor
8:00 PM – Music of Peter Lieberson, Mario Davidovsky, and David Rakowski
Artists: Speculum Musicae
Location: Mannes Concert Hall, 150 West 85th Street, NYC
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
11:00 AM Workshop with Marc Ponthus, Piano and Ensemble, Goldmark Recital Hall, 3rd Floor
8:00 PM – Solo and Chamber Works
Artists: IFCP Artists
Location: Mannes Concert Hall, 150 West 85th Street, NYC
Free Admission
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
8:00 PM – Solo and Chamber Works
Artists: IFCP Artists
Location: Mannes Concert Hall, 150 West 85th Street, NYC
Free Admission
Hello world!
May 30, 2009
Institute and Festival For Contemporary Performance (IFCP)
June 15- 24, 2009
Some of New York’s most significant contemporary music performers, composers, and thinkers will come together in the sixth annual Institute and Festival for Contemporary Performance, in Manhattan this month. For 9 days in June, New Yorkers will have the opportunity to hear some of the most significant composers and performers of contemporary classical music. The Festival will present workshops, master classes, lectures, symposiums, and concerts, in a program that focuses on the wealth of modern repertoire for solo-unaccompanied instruments and for chamber ensemble.
The institute aims not only to present concerts at the highest level of accomplishment, within a forum of ideas and educational support, but also to integrate the younger generation of performers within the larger New York cultural reservoir with its multifaceted possibilities.
This year’s innovative program will present generative works from different eras, and explore new directions in solo performance. It will also integrate video and text elements for the first time. Performers include Joel Krosnick, cello; Rolf Schulte, violin; and Marc Ponthus, IFCP founder and pianist. The lineup also features the noted chamber ensemble, Speculum Musicae.
Festival Website www.mannes.edu/ifcp
