The International Contemporary Ensemble Performs Jennie C. Jones at The Met
The performance is on Sunday, October 5, 2025 at 2:00 p.m.
By: Stephi Wild Sep. 11, 2025
The International Contemporary Ensemble will kick off its 23rd season, showcasing a collaboration with interdisciplinary artist Jennie C. Jones on Sunday, October 5, 2025 at 2:00 p.m. at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. While Jones has long created graphic scores as part of her visual practice, this marks the first time they will be interpreted through live performance. This concert explores the entanglement of visual art and sound, revealing how Jones's minimalist works resonate when performed by musicians. Jones's commission for The Met's Roof Garden, Ensemble, is currently on view until Sunday, October 19, 2025.
Jones and the Ensemble's Artistic Director, composer and musicologist George Lewis, who has published articles on her graphic scores, will also discuss the score's formal and sonic structure, which reframes Minimalism's legacy and illuminates new intersections between music, abstraction, and experimentation.
"The works of Jennie C. Jones advance trenchant cultural, aesthetic, and social critiques," George Lewis wrote in an article for Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. "Her aesthetically multivoiced corpus, which included audio collages, immersive sound installations, paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, evince a sharp engagement with histories and memories of sound and music."
The Ensemble welcomes nine phenomenal musicians who were introduced into its collective during the 2024-2025 season. Continuing its commitment to evolution, growth, and the exchange of new perspectives and practices, the Ensemble proudly welcomes: Alexander Davis, bassoon; Erika Dohi, violin; Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet; Darius Jones, Erin Rogers, saxophone; Nicolee Kuester, horn; Mariel Roberts Musa, cello; Emmalie Tello, clarinets; and Lizzie Burns, double bass.
International Contemporary Ensemble features in another interdisciplinary collaboration on Thursday, November 6, 2025 at 8:00 p.m. and Saturday, November 8, 2025 at 8:00 p.m. as part of The Museum of Modern Art's major retrospective, Stephen Prina: A Lick and a Promise in which the Ensemble and Ensemble Either/Or bring to life the world premiere of American artist, musician and composer Stephen Prina's newest work, A Lick and A Promise. These concerts at MoMA are part of the first in-depth survey to focus on Prina's performances, drawing out a central theme in his work: time, and the way it shifts cultural values. MoMA's survey offers an opportunity to celebrate Prina's innovative approach to appropriation-one uniquely focused on sound and music-and the rare warmth and intellectualism that mark him as a prescient and still-evolving artist. Both at the forefront of contemporary and experimental music over the past twenty years, the International Contemporary Ensemble and Ensemble Either/Or have enjoyed many successful collaborations in recent years, including presenting the work of Society of Black Composers co-founder Tālib-Rāsúl Hākím together with three MacArthur Fellows at the New York Public Library last season.
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