Ashley Fure's THE FORCE OF THINGS: AN OPERA FOR OBJECTS Set for Peak Performances

Peak Performances will present the American Premiere of The Force of Things: An Opera for Objects, from composer Ashley Fure.

Created in collaboration with her brother, the architect Adam Fure, and performed by International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), this innovative, immersive work wrestles with the animate vitality of matter and the haunting thrust of ecological anxiety around us.

Performances of The Force of Things will take place at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University (1 Normal Ave, Montclair, NJ) October 6 at 7:30pm, October 7 at 8pm, and October 7 & 8 at 3pm. Tickets, affordably priced at $20, can be purchased at www.peakperfs.org or 973.655.5112. The running time is approximately 75 minutes, with no intermission.

Exemplifying this dimension of her artistry, The Force of Things draws from traditions of puppetry and object theater and straddles the boundary between installation and live performance. The audience sits beneath a canopy of familiar and exotic objects while the performers-including percussionists Dustin Donahue, Ross Karre and Levy Lorenzo, bassoonist Rebekah Heller andsaxophonist Ryan Muncy-spur them into action. Singers Lucy Dhegrae and Alice Teyssier, like the sirens of mythology, shout and whisper warnings, luring the audience into altered modes of perception. A sense of urgency fills the space, and yet it's eerily still: as if the timescales are off, as if some future frantic state reaches us only in slow motion. The Force of Things makes audible this volatile stillness, tangling the audience in a web of vibrant matter.

In a companion essay for the American Premiere, Dana Beard emphasizes the way that, in The Force of Things, everyday materials-aircraft cable, poured silicone, reverberating subwoofers-transport us to new worlds. As Beard explains, "that wire flitting across the stage appears to be industrial cable performing its normative role as a tool of conveyance, but also as a tremulous boundary between the audience and the fleshy latex suspended overhead, a menacing weapon and multiphonic instrument. There is a pitched urgency in the grating of the wires against the crank, the anxious way it slaps against the latex. When it finally sings, it sings to us of its agency, its poetic possibility."

The creative team for The Force of Things includes producer/designer Ross Karre, engineer Levy Lorenzo and lighting designer Nicholas Houfek.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Ashley Fure (b. 1982) is an American composer and installation artist. Called "raw, elemental," and "richly satisfying" by The New York Times, her work explores the kinetic source of sound, bringing focus to the muscular act of music making and the chaotic behaviors of raw acoustic matter. She holds a PhD in Music Composition from Harvard University and joined the Dartmouth College Music Department as Assistant Professor in 2015. A finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Fure also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rome Prize in Music Composition, a DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Prize, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant for Artists, a Fulbright Fellowship to France, and a Mellon post-doctoral Fellowship from Columbia University.

Adam Fure (b. 1980) is an Architect and Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He received his Masters of Architecture from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he graduated with distinction and was awarded the Alpha Rho Chi medal. His work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Beijing Biennale, The New School in New York, the A+D Gallery in Los Angeles, the AA in London, and the Grand Rapids Museum of Art. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2014 Architectural League Prize and a residency fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude. His essays have been published in Log, Project Journal and Pidgin. Fure is a founding principal of the Ann Arbor-based architectural practice T+E+A+M.

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. A recipient of the American Music Center's Trailblazer Award and the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, ICE was also named the 2014 Musical America Ensemble of the Year. 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. New initiatives include OpenICE, made possible with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which offers free concerts and related programming 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 commissioned works together. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for ICE.

Peak Performances is a program of the Office of Arts and Cultural Programming at Montclair State University and has been honored by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts with an Arts Citation of Excellence and Designation of Major Impact. Programs in this season are made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts; the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts; and the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.