Carnegie Hall

Claire Chase, described by The New York Times as “the North Star of her instrument’s ever-expanding universe,” is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, she has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists, and in 2013 launched the 24-year commissioning project Density 2036. Now in its 10th year, Density 2036 reimagines the solo flute literature over a quarter-century through commissions, performances, recordings, education, and an accessible archive at density2036.org. Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble in 2001, was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2012, and in 2017 was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. She is currently professor of the practice of music at Harvard University, where she teaches courses on contemporary music, interdisciplinary collaboration, nonprofit arts organizations, and community-building through the arts. She is also a creative associate at The Juilliard School, and a collaborative partner with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony.

As an undergraduate at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble, a collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators committed to creating collaborations built on equity and cultural responsiveness. She served as the ensemble’s artistic director until 2017, and as an ensemble member on performance and education projects on five continents, developing an artist-driven organizational model that earned the group the Trailblazer Award from the American Music Center in 2010 and the Ensemble of the Year Award in 2014 from Musical America Worldwide.

From 2016 to 2019, Chase served as co-artistic director of Ensemble Evolution with her longtime collaborator Steven Schick. Ensemble Evolution is now a project of the International Contemporary Ensemble in collaboration with The New School College of Performing Arts.

Upcoming projects include performances of Felipe Lara’s new duo concerto for Chase and Esperanza Spalding with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic, conducted by Susanna Mälkki; and performances of Liza Lim’s Sex Magic, an evening-length solo for contrabass flute, electronics, and an installation of kinetic percussion.

Chase grew up in Leucadia, California, with the childhood dream of becoming a professional baseball player before she discovered the flute. She now lives in Brooklyn.

Lisa E. Harris (aka “Li”) is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, creative soprano, performer-composer, improviser, researcher, educator, and cultural producer from Houston, Texas. Her work considers the energetic relationships between body, land, spirit, and place. While exploring intuition, (per)sonification, movement, dream, and psychic activations, Harris maintains a focused concentration on healing in performance. Her debut LP, Life and That, combines original art songs with transcendent studio-recorded improvised first takes. Harris appeared in the world premiere of The Nubian Word for Flowers, a Phantom Opera by Pauline Oliveros and IONE. She is the founder and creative director of Studio Enertia, an arts collective and production company in Houston, which recently produced Harris’s 10-year durational work, Cry of the Third Eye, that archives the effects of redevelopment and the displacing of Black people and culture in her Houston neighborhood. In 2018, Harris created and curated Houston’s inaugural Free Time Flow Festival at MacGregor Park, celebrating the intersections of basketball, electro-acoustic music, improvisation, and creative expression. She is also responsible for instating and curating Pauline Oliveros Day at Discovery Green Houston. Harris is the recipient of several honorable awards, including a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship. She is now a guest lecturer at Harvard University’s Department of Music and a research fellow at Harvard ArtLab. Harris would like to thank her mother, loved ones, and ancestors for their continuous inspiration and love. 

Susie Ibarra is a Filipinx composer, percussionist, and sound artist. Much of her work focuses on conservation. With indigenous and traditional music cultures from the North and South Philippine islands, her sound research advocates the stewardship of glaciers and fresh waters; she also collaborates with Joudour Sahara in Morocco on initiatives in sustainable music and support for women and girls. She is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award and a US Artists Fellowship in Music, in addition to being named a National Geographic Explorer Storyteller, Asian Cultural Council Scholar, and TED Senior Fellow. Talking Gong—a trio album that features Claire Chase and Alex Peh—is inspired by Maguindanao kulintang and birdsongs. Water Rhythms: Listening to Climate Change is a collaboration with glaciologist Dr. Michele Koppes in which she creates compositions from recordings of five watersheds, including the Greenland ice sheet and the Himalayas. Ibarra’s work has been experienced at TED Countdown, Edinburgh; ARKO Art Center, Seoul; and Fridman Gallery, New York. Fragility Etudes, a commission for Asia Society Triennial 2021, premiered live at MASS MoCA in 2021. With Canadian composer and bassist Richard Reed Parry, Ibarra released the album Heart and Breath: Rhythm and Tone Fields in 2022, focusing on heartbeats and breath cycles. Ibarra is a Yamaha, Vic Firth, and Zildjian artist. 

Alex Peh is a pianist, improviser, and scholar who explores the piano in classical, contemporary, and improvised practices. A 2021 Fulbright Global Scholar, Peh explores repertoire from parallel piano universes that exist alongside European classical-contemporary piano music, delving into different approaches to tuning, pedagogy, notation, and musical transmission. He has commissioned composers such as Susie Ibarra, Hafez Modirzadeh, Ne Myo Aung, Nikos Ordoulidis, Anna Clyne, Phyllis Chen, and Kyaw Kyaw Naing. As a 2019 Asian Cultural Council Fellow, Peh traveled to Myanmar to study Burmese piano—a classical style that the Burmese call sandaya—from legendary pianist Dr. U Yee Nwe. Peh began his studies in sandaya with internationally acclaimed percussionist Kyaw Kyaw Naing, and collaborated with him to create the first Burmese Saing Waing ensemble in America. In 2019, they made their debut performance at New York City’s Roulette Intermedium. Peh collaborated with visual anthropologist Lauren Meeker to document this work as an ethnographic film that explores the process of attunement in learning Burmese Saing Waing music. Peh is a member of Talking Gong, an improvising trio with Susie Ibarra and Claire Chase. Peh mentored with Arnaldo Cohen, Menahem Pressler, Sylvia Wang, and Evelyne Brancart. He attended the Banff, Aspen, and Tanglewood music festivals, where he worked with Emanuel Ax, Pamela Frank, Claude Frank, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, and Peter Serkin. He is an associate professor of piano at SUNY New Paltz.

Senem Pirler is a sound and intermedia artist, and educator. Her interdisciplinary work crosses over into sound engineering, sound art, performance, video art, movement, and installation. Born in Turkey, Pirler studied classical piano at the Hacettepe University Ankara State Conservatory, and sound engineering and design at Istanbul Technical University / MIAM. She earned her master’s in music technology from New York University and her PhD in electronic arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Pirler has exhibited and performed her work at international venues, such as EMPAC, Roulette Intermedium, The Kitchen, Southbank Centre (London), Akademie der Künste (Berlin), Los Angeles Philharmonic, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Montalvo Arts Center, Mount Tremper Arts, and Collar Works. Her work has been recognized by grants and residencies, including honors from the Institute for Electronic Arts, PACT Zollverein, and Signal Culture. Pirler was awarded a 2022 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship and the 2018 Malcolm Morse Award to honor the work of Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening. She joined the faculty of Bennington College in 2018.