Claire Chase is a very special entrepreneur.  A concert level flutist who has championed contemporary music since her junior high school graduation, has put together an organization which is nimble, daring, fiscally sound and now global.

Chase is an unusual person, but suggests that if you can shape and discipline your passion, you can make what seems to be impossible come true.

Addressing the League of American Orchestras on June 5th, Chase gave the introduced her speech with a riveting solo performance of Density 21.5. The wailing rendition of the Varese piece had been turned down by her junior high school’s graduation committee. Instead she played Danny Boy.

The derailed attempt lit a fire in Chase to tell a different kind of story. She would not just be a seeker of sounds for the metal of the flute. Instead she would create stories we could all live in. Like the stories of Nation, Family, Religion and Community. We live within and with these narratives. In them, you constantly question. No longer is performance art segregated into unions, performers.

At ICE, performers run development and education departments. They bring their reverence for music and boundless curiosity to what are sometimes perceived as pedestrian tasks. Vast repertoire, past present and future. Palpable utopia one 100 people coming together to make music.

ICE is part circus troop, part garage band, part rock band. They have no fixed location instead performing wherever music can be made. Based in Chicago and New York, they are developing satellites on the West Coast, in Qatar and Greenland. Chase is willing to go out into space and perform on the moon. With her, this all seems possible.

Being a musician is being a teacher, and without any of the boredom of the classroom, ICE teaches and pulsates every moment. Claire Chase is a model entrepreneur.   ICE