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The Ensemble InterContemporain is a French chamber orchestra, based in Paris at the Cité de la musique and IRCAM, which specialises in contemporary classical music. The EIC has a comparatively large roster of permanent, salaried musicians, 31 as of 2012, all of whom are nominally 'soloists', including three full-time pianists, and three percussionists. Smaller, unconducted, groups drawn from the EIC are billed as 'Les Solistes de l'Ensemble Intercontemporain'. The EIC, through its association with IRCAM, is also unusual in having an annual open call for scores from composers of any age or nationality.
Pierre Boulez founded the EIC in 1976 in association with the French culture minister Michel Guy and the co-founder of the London Sinfonietta, Nicholas Snowman, conceiving it as a group of soloists who could play orchestral literature or literature for any combination of instruments. The idea was for the ensemble to be more flexible than a traditional symphony orchestra, allowing composers to write for a group of instruments of their own choice. Many works that might have been conceived for orchestra are now being written with this instrumentation in mind. For example, Tristan Murail's Désintégrations, Helmut Lachenmann's Zwei Gefühle: Musik mit Leonardo, and Pierre Boulez's Répons, are all pieces that exist in the area between orchestral and chamber music.
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