Arc by Intercontinental Ensemble

Those of you who are familiar with our previous albums know that we put a lot of thought into our album titles. This once again turned out to be a big challenge.

Whilst Traveling Light alluded to the symphonic arrangements and our ensemble’s international backgrounds and In Motu described both our personal motivation as well as the common motor behind the three pieces on the album, we knew from day one that this third album was much more rebellious and difficult to place. It truly is a nightmare for our (as of yet nonexistent) marketing department.

The first thing that sprung to mind was the female aspect: this album focuses on work by exclusively female composers, but to give the album a name based on that simply felt too easy and raised more questions than it answered.

The biggest question was: Is there something deeper that connects these artists?

Each composer has mastered a different style, which means that creating a description of one work ended up being detrimental to another. Whereas one composer challenges the listener with new combinations, another gives familiar sounds new perspective. One piece gives the impressions of stylistic refinement, wherein another puts emotion front and centre. What makes it even more complicated is that many of these contradictions can even be found during the same piece.

It became more and more clear that this album wasn’t about one specific feeling, style or thought. It was about the connection between the pieces various personalities which makes the individual pieces part of something bigger.

That’s how we came up with the title Arc, the shape in which bridges have been built for centuries and also the way in which character development is described in a story.

In terms of architecture, an arc is the shape which encompasses all of the same exciting contradictions as the pieces on this album. It combines the playful, serious, fragile, strong, the unpredictable and the refined and combines these into a detailed character description of each composer.

What’s more, every piece tells a personal story that takes the listener along, and as every good story does, provides the listener with new insights that they didn’t have beforehand.

In retrospect, Arc is a great counterpart to our previous album In Motu. A set of twins, of which one child, In Motu, plays outdoors all day, doing everything in his power to put anything he can get his hands on into his mouth whilst managing to get scrapes all over his body. The other child, Arc, is a dreamer whose powerful fantasy can create entire worlds and bring anyone willing along for the journey.

We hope that you’ll notice more and more connections between the pieces every time you listen to this album, and that you can experience it as a kind of sonic kaleidoscope, which tells you new stories every time you listen.

The Intercontinental Ensemble is an ensemble that consists out of 9 players from over the whole world. They combine 4 string and 5 wind players. The group was founded in 2012 in Amsterdam, with members from Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic, Luxemburg and the Netherlands.