PostClassical Ensemble is recognized for “turning familiar music on its head, providing context and fresh perspectives and generally pulling the rug out from under listeners” (Washington Post). PCE was founded in 2003 by Music Director Angel Gil-Ordóñez and Executive Director Joseph Horowitz as an experimental orchestral laboratory, producing immersion experiences that upend traditional boundaries. PCE programming is thematic and cross-disciplinary, typically incorporating art, film, dance, or theater, exploring unfamiliar works and composers, or recontextualizing standard repertoire. Central to its mission is collaboration with other cultural organizations, especially museums and universities, most regularly its educational partner Georgetown University. PostClassical Ensemble, called “wildly ambitious” by The Washington Post, and a “group known for revolution," parners frequently with the National Gallery of Art’s film and music divisions, the Kennedy Center, Strathmore, and Georgetown University. PCE’s repertoire emphasizes music composed after 1900 – from Copland, Ives, Mahler, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich to remarkable but less familiar works by, Chavez, Farwell, Gerhard, Montsalvatge, and Revueltas. 20th & 21st century composers whose music PCE has commissioned and/or premiered include Manuel de Falla, Ana Lara, Mario Lavista, Daniel Schnyder, David Taylor, and Zhou Long. PCE has collaborated with such artists as pianists Jeremy Denk, Benjamin Pasternak, Alexander Toradze, and William Wolfram, clarinetist David Krakauer, baritones Christòpheren Nomura and William Sharp, bass-baritone Kevin Deas, pipa virtuoso Min Xiao-fen, and internationally prominent folk music, gamelan, and flamenco artists.