Ensemble Bio

Praised by The New York Times as "an ensemble that plays by its own rules" and "a trustworthy purveyor of new sounds,” Either/Or has been at the forefront of New York's contemporary music scene since 2004. Winner of the 2015 CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, Either/Or focuses on new, recently composed, and rare works for various and often times unconventional instrumentations. Programmed by Director Richard Carrick and Curator Christopher McIntyre, the group’s projects are brought to life by its roster of 17 world-class musicians and special guests.

Either/Or has performed throughout the Northeast at venues including Philadelphia Museum of Art, ICA Boston, Miller Theatre, The Kitchen, as well as California and Swedish tours and frequent appearances at local experimental music venues such as The Stone, Roulette, and ISSUE Project Room.

Either/Or’s programming is aesthetically inclusive, ranging from the American Experimental tradition (Cage, Feldman, Lucier, Ashley) to the historical and contemporary European avant-garde, with a special emphasis on composers working outside the institutional mainstream. The group has premiered more than 200 works since its inception, not including dozens of student compositions. They have worked closely with many leaders in contemporary composition including George Lewis, Zeena Parkins, Beat Furrer, John Zorn, Miya Masaoka, Elliott Sharp, Helmut Lachenmann, Anthony Coleman, and Thomas Meadowcroft. Either/Or has received great acclaim for its numerous career-spanning portrait concerts, all of which were firsts in the US. Portrait composers include Iancu Dumitrescu, Ana Maria Avram, Chaya Czernowin, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Horatiu Radulescu, Karin Rehnqvist, Rebecca Saunders, Hans Thomalla, and Raphaël Cendo. The group brought many of these composers to New York City for public lectures and teaching engagements.

Either/Or has released ten full-length recordings of works commissioned or premiered by them on New World Records, Edition Moderne, Starkland, and Sterling labels. www.eitherormusic.org

Director

Richard Carrick

Richard Carrick is a New York based composer, pianist and conductor.  Described as “charming, with exoticism and sheer infectiousness” by Allan Kozinn of The New York Times, Richard Carrick's music has been performed throughout the Americas, Europe, and Japan by the New York Philharmonic (Ensemble Series), Vienna’s Konzerthaus, ISCM World Music Days, Darmstadt Summer Festival, the Nieuw Ensemble, the JACK Quartet, Tony Arnold, Magnus Andersson, Rohan de Saraam and others.    Recent works include Prisoner's Cinema for large ensemble and image projection, Harmonixity for Saxophone Quartet, Adagios for String Orchestra, and The Flow Cycle for Strings ( released on New World Records in 2011).  As a pianist and conductor he regularly premieres new works, working closely with composers including Lachenmann, Czernowin, Radulescu, Lewis, Greenwood, Rehnqvist, Saunders, Sharp and others. He teaches composition at Columbia University, New York University and for the New York Philharmonic and has guest lectured about his music in Japan, South Korea, Sweden, France, Germany, The Netherlands and the US. 

Curator

Christopher McIntyre

Christopher McIntyre’s primary artistic activity is performing on trombone and electronics in various musical contexts (from improvisative to interpretive) within the protean NYC community. He also makes compositional work for various media and instrumental forces, experimenting with recorded and synthesized sound and using transformational structures to create a narrative of evolving sonic states. He is the Director of Brooklyn’s TILT Brass, curates programs for ISSUE Project Room and Either/Or Ensemble, teaches contemporary brass chamber music at Mannes School of Music at The New School, and frequently performs in groups such as TILT, Either/Or, SEM and Talea Ensembles, among many others.