For the last year flutist Claire Chase has been communicating by E-mail and cell phone with dozens of musicians across the country to hammer out the logistics for ICE Fest 2003, a six-concert series of new music that starts this Saturday. Presented by the International Contemporary Ensemble, a network of musicians and composers Chase cofounded, the series is intended, she says, to draw art music out of its “elitist bubble.”
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ICE has its origins in a project Chase undertook three years ago as a senior at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where she studied under flute virtuoso Michel Debost. Interested in music outside the standard repertoire, she sought out work by contemporary composers, but quickly discovered that there wasn’t much available for her instrument. Driven to remedy the situation, she applied for and won a $5,000 grant from the Theodore Presser Foundation and used it to commission five composers–established names like Pauline Oliveros and Harvey Sollberger as well as young upstarts like Huang Ruo, a classmate–to write work for the flute.
ICE made its Chicago debut in January 2002 in a free concert at the Three Arts Club featuring music by J.S. Bach, John Cage, and Steve Reich as well as Chicago premieres of work by “icicles” Huang, Vincent Caliano, and David Reminick. The group mounted the first ICE Fest in June, staging three free concerts on a budget of about $7,000. The success of both ventures has only reinforced Chase’s conviction that new-music presenters are working with a faulty model. “They think in terms of, say, the 1,000 or so who regularly go to new-music concerts in Chicago and give them what they want to hear,” she says. “But I’m thinking of all those tiny theater companies in town that have been able to do good work and attract a following. Performances of new music should be stripped of pretensions and make listeners feel a connection.”
“The end goal of ICE is to create a community and a place for people who believe in new music that passionately to work together and create the future together. We do believe that what we do is relevant and approachable and important and that it doesn’t have to exist under a rock anymore.”
