International Contemporary Ensemble and conductor Kalena Bovell perform Leila Adu-Gilmore’s Mahakala Oratorio at the Skirball Center in Manhattan, with video projections by Aaron Sherwood.
In Monday’s (3/11) Musical America, Steve Smith writes, “George Lewis is a man with a mission, opening the concert-music field to composers previously marginalized or overlooked, and International Contemporary Ensemble audiences are reaping the benefits of his zeal. Since he became artistic director in 2022, Lewis has devoted considerable effort to expanding the enterprising new-music group’s already commendable breadth, with special attention paid to Black composers … On March 2 at New York University’s Skirball Center … Lewis and the ensemble extended that initiative with a concert featuring music by Anthony Davis … What International Contemporary Ensemble proved, in thrilling accounts of two Davis works from [the 1980s], is that Davis’s oeuvre is … as vital and arresting as it was when it first appeared … The second half of the program comprised two works by Leila Adu-Gilmore…. Adu-Gilmore embraces art pop, punk rock, hip hop, modern composition, and more … Adu-Gilmore managed it deftly with Alyssum, a splendid, sunny 2014 work for harp and string quartet…. The concert concluded with Adu-Gilmore’s Mahakala Oratorio, commissioned by the Nashville new-music ensemble Chatterbird … The International Contemporary Ensemble presented the work’s overdue live debut, with two vocal soloists … The ensemble, efficiently conducted by Kalena Bovell, made much of Adu-Gilmore’s ambitious, complex score.”
