Ensemble Decipher

Ensemble Decipher is a modular, experimental music group that performs with vintage, contemporary, and emerging technologies. Founded in 2017 by Niloufar Nourbakhsh, the ensemble strives to redefine performer virtuosity by drawing on the technological advancements of our time to highlight new voices and ways of listening. Ensemble Decipher seeks to reflect on and challenge the power structures that lace the field of electronic music by reexamining technology's role in their performance practice. Recent works commissioned by the group have mobilized network technologies, amplified gardening, machine learning, kinetic sculptures, acoustic instruments, and laptops. Ensemble Decipher consists of Joseph Bohigian, Robert Cosgrove, Eric Lemmon, Chelsea Loew, Taylor Long, and Niloufar Nourbakhsh.

Ensemble Decipher has collaborated with composers and technologists including Bora Yoon, Mari Kimura, Margaret Schedel, Daria Semegen, Erin Rogers, Jose Tomás Henriques, Mara Helmuth, Yaz Lancaster, Paul Leary, Lyn Goeringer, and Lainie Fefferman and premiered works by many others. Recent feature performances include concerts at the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, International Computer Music Conference, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Roulette Intermedium, Rhizome DC, New Music Gathering, and an ensemble residency at the New Music for Strings Festival in Denmark. Decipher has been in residence at Peabody Institute, Michigan State University, Stony Brook University, and the National Philharmonic Orchestra Summer String Institute. Their work has been supported by the MAP Fund, New Music USA, American Composers Forum, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Alice M. Ditson Fund, Amphion Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and Chamber Music America.

Decipher’s 2024-25 season will include performances in the Midwest featuring world premieres by Rob Cosgrove and Eric Lemmon along with existing works by Erin Rogers and Niloufar Nourbakhsh. In summer 2025, Decipher will workshop a new evening-length multimedia work with Joseph Bohigian and Khatchadour Khatchadourian in California, to be premiered in 2026 in San Francisco.