Sip a drink from the ICA Wine + Coffee Bar and enjoy live music from Gregory Groover, one of Boston’s best and brightest jazz musicians.
New York-born and Boston-bred saxophonist, composer, and educator Gregory Groover Jr pushes the boundaries of jazz while honoring its deep legacy. As a bandleader, Groover has released two albums (Negro Spiritual Songbook, Vol 1 & 2) and made his Criss Cross Records debut in April 2024 with his record Lovabye. In addition to being a bandleader, Groover is a highly sought-after collaborator having performed in music festivals in the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Africa with some of the world’s leading voices in contemporary music. Groover’s continued dedication to his craft and unwavering commitment to excellence have solidified his position as a prominent figure in the contemporary jazz scene.
Still from Eno
Following two sold-out screenings, Eno returns to the ICA with three unique presentations of Gary Hustwit’s groundbreaking documentary. Working with generative software, Hustwit created a documentary process that produces infinite variations—each with its own archival material, interviews, backstage footage, oblique strategies, and musical numbers—befitting its always experimental subject, Brian Eno. The visionary musician and artist is known for producing music for David Bowie, U2, and Talking Heads, among many others; playing with the glam-rock band Roxy Music; pioneering the genre of ambient music; and releasing more than 40 solo and collaboration albums. The New York Times describes Eno as both “unlike any other portrait of a musician” and “marvelously watchable.”
Are there other access accommodations that would be useful to help you fully participate in this program? Let us know at accessibility@icaboston.org or learn more about Accessibility at the ICA at icaboston.org/accessibility.
Photo by Hayim Heron
Tickets will be available to ICA Members on 12/3 and to the general public on 12/10.
Urban Bush Women (UBW) burst onto the dance scene in 1984 with bold, innovative, demanding, and exciting works that brought under-told stories to life. Originally founded by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the company, now under the co-artistic direction of Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Spies, continues to weave contemporary dance, music, and text with the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora.
A centerpiece of Urban Bush Women’s 40th Anniversary Celebration, This is Risk looks forward and back in celebrating four decades of operating at the vanguard of movement and social activism. This is Risk takes the audience through intentional storytelling to the next space of collective brilliance. This energetically charged evening includes iconic legacy works by founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Haint Blu, a transformative dance-theater work by Co-Artistic Directors Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis. Haint Blu is an ensemble dance-theater work seeped in memory and magic. Named for the color that Southern families paint their front porches to ward off bad spirits, Haint Blu uses performance as a center and source of healing, taking us through movement into stillness and rest. It is an embodied look into familial lines and the movements, histories, and stories of our elders and ancestors. It reflects on what has been lost across generations and what can be recovered.
Are there other access accommodations that would be useful to help you fully participate in this program? Let us know at accessibility@icaboston.org or learn more about Accessibility at the ICA at icaboston.org/accessibility.
Photo by Makenzie L. Goodman
Tickets will be available to ICA Members on 12/3 and to the general public on 12/10.
Star Scores is both a performance and immersive sculptural installation by Roberto Carlos Lange (also known as Helado Negro) and visual artist Kristi Sword. The piece features a live ensemble performance of four experimental compositions, paired with an impressionistic film that explores the imperceptible forces that shape the West Texas landscape and the Appalachian skies. Parts of the film were originally commissioned by Ballroom Marfa and organized by Sarah Melendez.
The installation, featuring large-scale weather balloons, never-before-seen abstract visuals by Sword, and an immersive soundscape by Lange, will be on view in the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater, included with museum admission, at the following times:
Thu, Feb 13, 2025 | 5–9 PM
Sat + Sun | Feb 15 + 16, 2025, 11 AM–4 PM
Roberto Carlos Lange, known as Helado Negro, is a South Florida native born to Ecuadorian immigrants and is based in North Carolina. As Helado Negro, he creates music that blends ambient “avant boleros” with abstract lyrical songs and more rhythm-driven electro-acoustic pieces, and he sings in both English and Spanish. His artistic works reach beyond music. He creates experimental films, sound installations, and community song collaborations. In 2019, he received a United States Artists Fellowship in music and a Grants to Artists award in music from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. He has exhibited with Ballroom Marfa in collaboration with Kristi Sword and the pair has an upcoming installation performance at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Helado Negro released his latest album, PHASOR, on 4AD in 2024.
Kristi Sword is a visual artist working in small-scale sculpture and drawing with materials such as mylar, hand-drawn 16mm film, translucent adhesives, and brass to explore their textural and sculptural possibilities. Her foundation in metals and jewelry has created a bedrock for methodical processes. Her exploration of different media extends from large-scale black–and–white pen–and–ink drawings to 2D stop–motion animation. Kristi has shown her artwork at Ballroom Marfa and has an upcoming show with Roberto Carlos Lange at The University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
Are there other access accommodations that would be useful to help you fully participate in this program? Let us know at accessibility@icaboston.org or learn more about Accessibility at the ICA at icaboston.org/accessibility.
Tickets will be available to ICA Members on 12/3 and to the general public on 12/10.
French composer Pierre Boulez (1925–2016) was among the most influential composers and music educators of the last hundred years. Consistently challenging the musical status quo, Boulez’s music transformed and revolutionized the contemporary musical landscape. In addition to composition, Boulez was a singular conductor who led performances by some of the world’s best orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, and the Chicago Symphony. Boulez also invested in contemporary music’s future, building institutions, ensembles, and training programs like IRCAM, Ensemble intercontemperain, and the Lucerne Festival that still thrive today.
The ICA and the Boston University Center for New Music celebrate the life and legacy of Boulez. Sound Icon, one of Boston’s leading interpreters of contemporary music, will perform under the direction of conductor Jeffrey Means two monumental Boulez works: the early career masterpiece Le marteau sans maître and the late period Dérive 2. These two pieces highlight the extraordinary range, color, and depth of Boulez’s music and offer audiences a rare opportunity to hear these works performed live.
Pierre Boulez’s music and the institutions he built made a lasting impression on the contemporary music world, and his influence continues to challenge and inspire.
Are there other access accommodations that would be useful to help you fully participate in this program? Let us know at accessibility@icaboston.org or learn more about Accessibility at the ICA at icaboston.org/accessibility.
Samora Pinderhughes is a composer, pianist/vocalist, and interdisciplinary artist whose work delves into the things our society tries to hide—about its history, its structures, and the individual and daily things we all experience but don’t know how to talk about. His art is an invitation to feel things deeply and to think deeply about how we all live. He is known for his honest lyrics, his harmonic language, his vulnerable visuals, his cultural commentary, and his commitment to making art that is of use to everyday life. He is also known for using his music to examine sociopolitical issues and fight for change, and he works in the tradition of the Black surrealists, those who bend word, sound, and image toward the causes of revolution. Pinderhughes’s emotional, soulful music and lyrics beautifully unravel difficult and vulnerable topics.
For this one-night-only experience at the ICA, Pinderhughes will perform in support of his new album, Venus Smiles Not in the House of Tears. He will be joined onstage by his longtime band members and a multi-voiced choir for an unforgettable evening of contemplative, searching, and joyful music.
Pinderhughes has collaborated with many artists across boundaries and scenes, including Herbie Hancock, Glenn Ligon, Sara Bareilles, Simone Leigh, Daveed Diggs, Kyle Abraham, Titus Kaphar, and Lalah Hathaway. He is the first-ever Art for Justice + Soros Justice Fellow and a recipient of Chamber Music America’s 2020 Visionary Award.
Are there other access accommodations that would be useful to help you fully participate in this program? Let us know at accessibility@icaboston.org or learn more about Accessibility at the ICA at icaboston.org/accessibility.
Photo by Carlin Ma
Renowned quartet Sandbox Percussion joins forces with Gandini Juggling to illustrate how we hear, see, and perform sounds and rhythm. This unique new live collaboration combines percussion music by contemporary composers Steve Reich, Iannis Xenakis, Amy Beth Kirsten, and Andy Akiho performed live by Sandbox with the virtuosic, mind-blowing juggling of Gandini to illuminate music both visually and aurally. With vanishing dots of sound and balls replicating and complementing complex rhythms in the air, Gandini Juggling and Sandbox Percussion make the complex simple and the simple complex. This will be serious fun.
Following the Friday performance, members of the company will join John Andress, Bill T. Jones Director/Curator of Performing Arts, for a post-performance conversation.
Advisory note: This performance includes moments of flashing light.
Are there other access accommodations that would be useful to help you fully participate in this program? Let us know at accessibility@icaboston.org or learn more about Accessibility at the ICA at icaboston.org/accessibility.
This performance was developed at a Summer Stages Dance @ ICA/Boston residency in July 2023. Summer Stages Dance @ ICA/Boston is made possible, in part, with the support of Jane Karol and Howard Cooper, George and Ann Colony, The Aliad Fund, and Stephanie and Leander McCormick-Goodhart.
Photo by Maria Baranova
Photo by Maria Baranova
“An enthralling, epically adventurous work”
—New York Times
Choreographer Faye Driscoll’s newest work Weathering is a multi-sensory flesh sculpture made of bodies, sounds, scents, liquids, and objects. Ten people (dancers, singers, and crew) enact a glacially morphing tableau vivant on a mobile raft-like stage surging through the Anthropocene. Their voices generate a score that crescendos and resonates as they clutch, careen, and cleave in a space too small to contain them, spilling off the edges. The audience embanks the performers, close enough to smell the sweat and feel the steam of these central, spiraling scenes. The symphonically active, luminously living work is a breathing, leaking choreography of micro events within a momentum thrusting from just beyond the perceivable. Driscoll and her team of collaborators ask: How do we feel the impact of events moving through us which are so much larger, yet are animating and activating our bodies all the time? How do we get closer to the impact? Can we slow down enough to feel the dust, hurt, howl, absence, spill, plume?
Advisory note: This performance includes moments of full and partial nudity.
Are there other access accommodations that would be useful to help you fully participate in this program? Let us know at accessibility@icaboston.org or learn more about Accessibility at the ICA at icaboston.org/accessibility.
Henry Threadgill
Vijay Iyer. Photo by Lena Adasheva
Dafnis Prieto. Photo by Osmani Tellez
Tickets will be available to ICA Members on 12/3 and to the general public on 12/10.
Three legendary jazz musicians perform together for the first time for a night of improvisation and cross-cultural collaboration. Featuring Pulitzer Prize-winner Henry Threadgill on winds and MacArthur Fellows Dafnis Prieto on percussion and Vijay Iyer on piano, the trio blends tradition and experimentation with a diverse set of influences that pushes musical boundaries and explores the ever-evolving nature of jazz.
Are there other access accommodations that would be useful to help you fully participate in this program? Let us know at accessibility@icaboston.org or learn more about Accessibility at the ICA at icaboston.org/accessibility.
New Orleans electro-revival dynamo Dawn Richard unites with multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer Spencer Zahn for a stunning concert in support of their second collaborative album. Quiet in a World Full of Noise blends atmospheric and orchestral soundscapes with mellifluous soul, jazz, and journalistic vocalizing—driving it all home with stark, confessional lyricism. Richard is, “a singer of big emotions, and even as she’s pushed her solo work further into experimental realms, she has continued to foreground feeling above all else” (Pitchfork). Zahn and Richard have made an album that serves as a blueprint for stillness, simplicity, and the art of working across differences in the midst of a polarizing cultural climate. Richard describes Quiet in a World Full of Noise as grounding: “Right now, everyone’s a little bit overwhelmed. I hope that this will be the record that people put on when they need the opportunity for reflection, when they need the stillness in their lives, now more than ever.”
Niecy Blues will perform an opening set. The music of South Carolina singer and producer Niecy Blues captures a sense of deep-rooted divination, cycling between simmering ballads, ghostly R&B, downtempo gospel, and looped vocal improvisations.
Are there other access accommodations that would be useful to help you fully participate in this program? Let us know at accessibility@icaboston.org or learn more about Accessibility at the ICA at icaboston.org/accessibility.