Grammy-nominated NYC new music pillar Metropolis Ensemble announces live performances of Simeon ten Holt's minimalist landmark Canto Ostinato for over 50 musicians on June 20, 2024.
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Press Release
Pioneering indie rock duo Wye Oak, composer William Brittelle, Paul Wiancko, Metropolis Ensemble are releasing a reimagined version of the band's 2014 record, Shriek, to celebrate its 10-year anniversary.
Nonesuch releases composer Timo Andres’ new studio album, The Blind Banister, on March 22, 2024 featuring pianist Timo Andres, cellist Inbal Segev, and Metropolis Ensemble conducted by Andrew Cyr.
New Amsterdam releases composer William Brittelle’s new studio album, Alive in the Electric Snow Dream, on February 23, 2024 featuring Holland Andrews, Jenn Wasner, Eliza Bagg, and Metropolis Ensemble conducted by Andrew Cyr.
Cosm, a leading experiential media and immersive technology company, taps composer Ricardo Romaneiro for their new L.A. venue: the world’s first 87-foot diameter 12K LED dome.
Metropolis Ensemble is a recipient of a 2024 grant award from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) to support the nonprofit arts and culture sector.
Featuring the World Premiere of 18 new works for solo piano, co-commissioned by Metropolis Ensemble and pianist Han Chen, celebrating the centenary birthday of Hungarian-Austrian composer György Ligeti.
Opus Klassik, Germany’s prestigious juried classical music prize, announced nominees for the 2023 awards, with two nominations for Metropolis Ensemble’s 2022 studio album, Telekinesis.
Metropolis Ensemble today announced "Biophony Pop-Up NYC 2023," a series of free pop-up concerts at dozens of pedestrian plazas, public parks, and open streets across New York City.
Metropolis Ensemble’s immersive soundbath audiovisual experience by composer Ricardo Romaneiro features plant-generated soundscapes and live musicians in each conservatory ecosystem.
Seth Colter Walls reviews our new studio album, Telekinesis: “And here it is... Tyondai Braxton in full command of his art…”
Introducing Metropolis Radio, our new ongoing series of curated Spotify playlists from the next generation of composers and performers.
Metropolis will be in residency at Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) state-of-the-art facilities in Troy, New York in 2021.
What if a concert could go on forever? This fall, we're launching a new digital installation conceived by Jakub Ciupinski.
The Metropolis Ensemble community is delighted to congratulate our good friend Timo Andres on being named Pulitzer Prize finalist in the music category for “The Blind Banister”, a piano quintet written for Jonathan Bliss. This three-movement piece inspired by Beethoven takes listeners on a beautiful quest in which they rise and fall with the music’s ascending and descending scales. (Pulitzer.org)
Andres has been a close collaborator with Metropolis Ensemble since 2009. In 2013, Metropolis Ensemble’s studio album Home Stretch, released on Nonesuch Records, paired the title work with two Metropolis-commissioned works from Andres: a recomposition of Mozart’s “Coronation” Piano Concerto and “Paraphrase on Themes by Brian Eno”.
Stay tuned for exciting news about future plans for next season with Timo Andres and Metropolis…
About The Blind Banister
Like when the light goes out on the stairs and the hand follows—with confidence—the blind banister that finds its way in the darkness.
Andres’ concerto, which debuted in Saint Paul, Minnesota in November 2015, is the first concerto of pianist Jonathan Biss’ latest Beethoven project, Beethoven/5, for which the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra has commissioned five composers to write new piano concertos, each inspired by one of Beethoven’s five piano concertos.
Andres describes his piece saying, " Beethoven gave his early second piano concerto (‘not one of my best’, in his own estimation) a kind of renovation in the form of a new cadenza, 20 years down the line (around the time he was working on the Emperor concerto). It’s wonderfully jarring in that he makes no concessions to his earlier style; for a couple of minutes, we’re plucked from a world of conventional gestures into a future-world of obsessive fugues and spiraling modulations. Like any good cadenza, it’s made from those same simple gestures—an arpeggiated triad, a sequence of downward scales—but uses them as the basis for a miniature fantasia.
“My third piano concerto, 'The Blind Banister,' is a whole piece built over this fault line in Beethoven’s second, trying to peer into the gap. I tried as much as possible to start with those same extremely simple elements Beethoven uses; however, my piece is not a pastiche or an exercise in palimpsest. It doesn’t even directly quote Beethoven. There are some surface similarities to his concerto (a three-movement structure, a B-flat tonal center) but these are mostly red herrings. The best way I can describe my approach to writing the piece is: I started writing my own cadenza to Beethoven’s concerto, and ended up devouring it from the inside out.”
Metropolis Ensemble travels to The Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.), as part of their 75th Anniversary Season
Metropolis Ensemble travels to D.C. on May 8 to one of America’s most venerable and long-standing concert series, Phillips Music, as part of their 75th Anniversary Season.
The concert takes place on Sunday, May 8 at 4pm at 1600 21st Street NW, Washington, DC 20009. Tickets here.
Grammy-nominated chamber orchestra Metropolis Ensemble, led by conductor Andrew Cyr, “a prominent influence in the world of newly emerging music” (The Washington Post), presents another iteration of its ongoing, site-specific project Brownstone. This ground-breaking “concert-installation” will feature three electro-acoustic works where audience members leave their chairs behind to experience The Phillips Collection from new perspectives, including the World Premiere of a work by composer Paula Matthusen (2014 Elliot Carter Rome Prize winner).
Commissioned in honor of the 75th Anniversary Season of Phillips Music, between the smell of dust and moonlight will engage with the idea of the gradual evolution of space and the multiple roles it may serve. Written specifically for museum, the piece draws on its present incarnation as renowned art museum as well as the traces of its domestic past, as evidenced by its unique doorways and fireplaces.
This concert will also feature music by Polish-American composer Jakub Ciupinski (Brownstone, (2010)with violin soloist and Metropolis concertmaster Kristin Lee) and music by Pulitzer-Prize finalist Christopher Cerrone (Memory Palace (2012) featuring solo percussionist Ian Rosenbaum), transporting audience members throughout many of the museum’s galleries and spaces.
About Paula Matthusen
Paula Matthusen is a composer who writes both electroacoustic and acoustic music and realizes sound installations. In addition to writing for a variety of different ensembles, she also collaborates with choreographers and theater companies. She has written for diverse instrumentations, such as “run-on sentence of the pavement” for piano, ping-pong balls, and electronics, which Alex Ross of The New Yorker noted as being “entrancing.” Her work often considers discrepancies in musical space—real, imagined, and remembered.!!Her music has been performed by Dither, Mantra Percussion, the Bang On A Can All-Stars, Alarm Will Sound, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Brooklyn Rider, the Scharoun Ensemble, orchest de ereprijs, The Glass Farm Ensemble, the Estonian National Ballet, James Moore, Kathryn Woodard, Todd Reynolds, Kathleen Supové, Margaret Lancaster, Nina de Heney and Jody Redhage.
Her work has been performed at numerous venues and festivals in America and Europe, including the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the MusicNOW Series of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Ecstatic Music Festival, the ACO SONiC Festival, Other Minds, the MATA Festival, Merkin Concert Hall, the Aspen Music Festival, Bang on a Can Summer Institute of Music at MassMoCA, the Gaudeamus New Music Week, SEAMUS, International Computer Music Conference and Dither’s Invisible Dog Extravaganza. She performs live-electronics frequently with Object Collection, OZET, and through the theater company Kinderdeutsch Projekts.!!Awards include the Walter Hinrichsen Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fulbright Grant, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers’ Awards, First Prize in the Young Composers’ Meeting Composition Competition, the MacCracken and Langley Ryan Fellowship, the “New Genre Prize” from the IAWM Search for New Music, and recently the 2014 Elliott Carter Rome Prize. Matthusen has also held residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, create@iEar at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, STEIM, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts.
Her album “Pieces for People” (Innova) was recently listed by Alex Ross as one of the best classical albums of 2015. Her work is also available through New Amsterdam, Quiet Design, and C.F. Peters.!!Matthusen completed her Ph.D. at New York University – GSAS. She was Director of Music Technology at Florida International University for four years, where she founded the FLEA Laptop Ensemble. Matthusen is currently Assistant Professor of Music at Wesleyan University, where she teaches experimental music, composition, and music technology.
About Music at The Phillips Collection
Audiences and artists have been coming together at The Phillips Collection well before 1941, when Phillips Music became a series of 30+ concerts per year. Throughout 2015/2016, Phillips Music Series commemorates its 75th season of presenting enthralling performances in the Music Room’s idyllic chamber music environment. Highlights include, notwithstanding a reenactment of the iconic 1955 US debut of Glenn Gould and several World Premieres, Phillips Music pays special tribute to the outstanding musicians of the US military for their role in keeping Phillips Music continually running during World War II.
Metropolis Ensemble’s newest Resident Artist project, featuring Ashley Bathgate and Sleeping Giant
On Tuesday January 12th Metropolis Ensemble will present Bach Unwound with Ashley Bathgate and Brooklyn-based composer collective Sleeping Giant (Timo Andres, Andrew Norman, Jacob Cooper, Christopher Cerrone, Robert Honstein, and Ted Hearne).
Bathgate, an innovative and tasteful cellist who brings classical and contemporary music to a new level, will perform “re-imagined” versions of Bach’s cello suites, a 21st century version of this staple in classical cello repertoire.
Recent press has acclaimed cellist Ashley Bathgate as an “eloquent new music intrepreter” (New York Times) and “a rising star of her instrument” (Albany Tmes Union) who combines “bittersweet lyricism along with ferocious chops” (New York Magazine). Bathgate describes working with Metropolis Ensemble as a “chance to stand out and to curate a show of your own, which is not something a lot of ensembles will encourage or support.”
1. What’s it like to collaborate with the Brooklyn-based composer collective Sleeping Giant and Metropolis Ensemble?
I have been a member of Metropolis Ensemble since 2009, and I love working with them. Andrew Cyr always has really great programming ideas, and the musicians involved are some of the best in the city. The Resident Artist Series, started a couple years ago as a platform for the ensemble’s individual members to showcase their solo projects, also includes collaborations with today’s composers. It offers a unique chance to stand out and curate a show of your own, an opportunity few ensembles encourage or support. You ou can do things like this on your own, but in my opinion it’s not always as effective or easy to execute without the guidance and resources of an organization, like Metropolis, behind you.
The composers of Sleeping Giant have a long history together and also happen to be some of the leading composers out there right now. They’re killin’ it. When I thought up this idea, they were the first people who came to mind. I have played so much of their music in the past and even commissioned some of them individually, so we get to skip the whole “getting to know you” part and just dive right into music making. I appreciate how different each of them are in their compositional styles and also how well they work together as this collective to produce lengthier, collaborative compositions. I wanted to commission a multi-dimensional, multi-movement work for solo cello, and I knew they were the dream team for this project. Working with them has been incredible so far. It’s really exciting to have music written specifically for you and by people you know so well. Most of the pieces are finished now (I couldn’t ask for better Christmas presents!), and I am at the stage of working them up for the January premiere. We’ll meet and Skype to go over things in the next couple weeks. I have some of the electronic components left to assemble, but the piece has really begun to take shape, and I have a pretty clear idea of how the evening will go.
2. How did you get involved with these two ensembles and collectives?
I met most of what would become the Sleeping Giant composer collective during my time at the Yale School of Music. Andrew Norman, Ted Hearne, Timo Andres and Jacob Cooper were my classmates and I met Chris Cerrone and Robert Honstein a few years later when I returned for alumni concerts and other collaborations in New Haven. From there we all ended up in NYC doing various things. Because the new music community is quite small and tight-knit, we ended up seeing one another and working together quite often. We’re growing up together, in a way, and there’s just this sense that it will continue for many decades to come. I cannot wait to see where we all end up and how our lives will continue to intersect.
My first show with Metropolis Ensemble was as a sub for another cellist who couldn’t do the gig shortly after I had moved to the city. I remember feeling so lucky to have come onto their radar. It’s hard to be a free lancer, it’s hard to get started here, and I was surprised and elated that I was already satisfying my need for chamber music and orchestral playing, with some of the best musicians in the city, no less. On top of that, they were commissioning and programming interesting new music, about which I was becoming increasingly curious and passionate. Some of that music included works by members of the Sleeping Giant collective. It seemed only natural to make Metropolis a part of Bach Unwound’s beginnings.
3. The Bach cello suites are such a staple in the classical repertoire. Can you talk about the creative process of creating new cello works based off of the Unaccompanied Cello Suites of J.S. Bach.
This project began with my desire to rediscover Bach’s Cello Suites. The last time I worked on them was during my days as a student. This was long before I became so heavily immersed in new music. I’ve grown in so many ways since then ,and it just felt like the right time to come back to this repertoire. I wanted to also find a way to link my love of contemporary music to this “re-discovery” process. There is plenty of new music for solo cello out there but not a lot that incorporates amplification/electronics and not a lot on the same scale as Bach’s Six Suites. I wanted something epic, and I wanted it to find some tether to a body of work that has been so loved and respected over the years, these compositional masterpieces that allowed the cello to step out as a solo voice beyond its traditional role as a continuo or basso accompaniment. I wanted the past to meet the present in order to show contrast but also to highlight the evolution of music and of this instrument in particular. Like, “Hey, here’s how far we have come because of works like Bach’s Suites. Thank you Bach, thank you Britten, Crumb, Xenakis, Golijov, Saariaho, thank you Casals, Rostropovich, Fred Sherry, Carter Brey, Frances Marie Uitti, Ernst Reijseger … thank you Sleeping Giant” … the list is endless and will continue to grow.
I gave the composers freedom to choose their inspiration from the suites based on what moved them most as individuals and as a group, be it a movement, a concept, a phrase, or just one chord. There were very few parameters because I wanted this to be more of a creative experiment than a prescription. As the performer of the work I also wanted to have the freedom to discover their pieces and then decide which movements of Bach would fit best. I don’t see the premiere in January as the one way it will always be performed. I wanted a certain amount of flexibility so that this project can continue to grow as I grow and live with the music.
I can’t speak to creating these new works (the Sleeping Giants would have more to say about that), but I can tell you about working on a program like this. I have found that being a performer of contemporary music requires different skill sets than performing more traditional repertoire. As a result, when I return to older music I approach it in a different way than I used to. One experience informs the other and I find that relationship intriguing. So the goal here is to dig deeper into my own being and to ask questions, like, do I separate Bach from the newer work or do I intermix the two? What movements of Bach would I pair with the new pieces and WHY? How will I order them? Will it work to interpret old like new or new like old or a mesh of both? Can I make this a seamless concert experience or will it need to breathe in sections? That’s where I am at with it right now. I am asking a lot of questions and I am trying a lot of different things that will lead to some (hopefully good) musical decisions.
4. What or who is your biggest influence as an artist?
The people around me are my biggest influence. I am so fortunate to have amazing colleagues and a back yard that is overflowing with new and exciting art. Everywhere I turn people are creating; music, art, dance, film, etc. It’s impossible to run out of inspiration in this city and in a genre that excels at pushing limits and breaking down walls. The Bang on a Can All-Stars, our artistic directors Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, as well as our “extended family” (which includes so many wonderful colleagues from the summer festival and various other collaborations), are who I spend most of my time with musically. Each one of them has had a tremendous impact on my approach to music and to my instrument. Since joining this band (almost 7 years ago now), I’ve become a better musician, I have found music to play that I am really passionate about and I have learned to embrace challenges and new ways of playing. I am enjoying a feeling of musical freedom that I never imagined I would have, and I owe that feeling to the people who surround me.
post by: Sequoia Sellinger
The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) announced today that Edmonton-born composer Vivian Fung’s Violin Concerto is the winner of the 2013 Juno Award for “Classical Composition of the Year.”
[caption id=“attachment_1142” align=“alignnone” width=“500”] Khmer Arts Ensemble performing “A Bend in the River.” Photo by John Shapiro.[/caption]
Metropolis Ensemble is pleased to announce a co-commissioning partnership with Cambodian Living Arts as part of Season of Cambodia to develop a new work by Cambodian composer Him Sophy. Nearly four decades after the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge, no major symphonic work has emerged in Cambodia to address the traumas of the late 1970s. Cambodian composer and Khmer Rouge survivor Him Sophy is composing music for Paṃsukūla that combines a Western symphony orchestra and chorus with Khmer instrumentalists and vocalists. The libretto of this new requiem is structured on a Cambodian Buddhist liturgy for healing the sick and offering merit to the dead, known in Pali as pamsukula (pronounced in Khmer as bangsokol) and is written by Buddhist scholar, Trent Walker.
On April 15, 16, and 17, as part of Season of Cambodia, Metropolis Ensemble will bring together six Cambodian instrumentalists and singers to develop methods for uniting traditional Cambodian musical and ceremonial forms with a Western chamber orchestra and chorus. An invitation-only work-in-progress presentation will take place on April 17. Kindly RSVP by April 8 (support@seasonofcambodia.org or 855-762-2013).
Go behind-the-scenes with Andrew Cyr, artistic director of Metropolis Ensemble, John Burt, co-founder of Cambodian Living Arts, and Cambodian composer Him Sophy.
[caption id=“attachment_1138” align=“alignright” width=“200”] Composer Him Sophy[/caption]
Him Sophy is professor of music at the Royal University of Fine Arts and the Royal Academy of Cambodia, and an instructor at the Northbridge School. Born into a musical family in Prey Veng province, Cambodia, Sophy has studied in Phnom Penh and Moscow and was a visiting artist in the United States during 2001-02. He has written many compositions for chamber, orchestral, film, and musical settings, including the acclaimed rock opera Where Elephants Weep, premiere 2008. His most recent commissions include a premiere in March 2011 at the Auckland Arts Festival and the score for Khmer Arts new dance production “A Bend in the River” at the Joyce Theater, April 2013 as part of Season of Cambodia.
Sophy’s new work, Paṃsukūla, adopts the Western tradition of a Christian requiem mass for the predominantly Buddhist Cambodian context. The libretto of this new requiem is structured on a Cambodian Buddhist liturgy for healing the sick and offering merit to the dead, known in Pali as paṃsukūla. This ritual is rich in symbolic meaning and is performed at Cambodian healing ceremonies, funerals, and memorial services. Given the enduring importance of performing arts in Cambodian culture, music is a singularly powerful vehicle for this healing.
Season of Cambodia lights up New York City’s cultural landscape in April and May 2013, with more than 125 artists from Cambodia for a major celebration of Cambodian arts, culture, and humanities. Distinctive works from master and emerging artists and scholars — in ritual, music, visual arts, performance, dance, shadow puppetry, film, and academic forums — will be presented by 30 of New York’s most renowned arts and educational institutions, marking an unprecedented city-wide partnership initiative to celebrate one of the world’s most vibrant and evocative cultures. Season of Cambodia is an initiative of Cambodian Living Arts.
Cambodian Living Arts (CLA) is a Phnom Penh-based NGO with non-profit status in the United States, founded in 1998 by artist and Khmer Rouge survivor Arn Chorn-Pond to preserve Cambodia’s traditional art forms. CLA began a new commissions program in 2003 to inspire a new generation of artists, composers, playwrights and choreographers to create new work.
Metropolis Ensemble is a professional chamber orchestra and ensemble dedicated to making classical music in its most contemporary forms. Led by Grammy-nominated conductor Andrew Cyr, Metropolis Ensemble gathers today’s most outstanding emerging composers and young artists to produce unique, innovative concert experiences. Founded in 2006, Metropolis Ensemble has commissioned over 85 works of music from a dynamic mix of emerging composers and has been presented by The Wordless Music Series, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, (Le) Poisson Rouge, and Celebrate Brooklyn!, BAM, and The New Victory Theater. Learn more…
Generous support for Metropolis Ensemble is provided by the American Chai Trust and Michael Cohn. Lead institutional support for Season of Cambodia comes from Ford Foundation, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation.
Metropolis Ensemble, led by Grammy-nominated conductor Andrew Cyr, is delighted to announce its collaboration with The Opera Group and Opera North: “The Firework Maker’s Daughter” a new opera by David Bruce and Glyn Maxwell based on the enchanting novel by acclaimed author Philip Pullman. The family-friendly production will be presented May 3-12, 2013 at The New Victory Theater in New York City. This captivating opera tells the story of one girl’s quest to become a firework maker. Determined to master Crackle Dragons, Leaping Monkeys and Golden Sneezes, Lila tests her talents and gambles her good fortune as she parlays with pirates, grapples with ghosts and faces off with a ferocious fire-fiend. “The Firework Maker’s Daughter” features an internationally-inspired score by David Bruce and a witty libretto by Glyn Maxwell and a cast of five artists who enliven shadow puppets from Cambridge, England’s Indefinite Articles. Metropolis artists, including nine players, will perform this chamber opera in two acts, set in a fantastical land where animals talk, goddesses reign and imps dwell. Philip Pullman is the author of several best-selling books, most notably the fantasy trilogy “His Dark Materials,” including Northern Lights which was adapted for film in 2007 as “The Golden Compass” starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. He published “The Firework Maker’s Daughter” in 1996, incorporating his love for the inventive names of pyrotechnics like incandescent fountain and scarlet volcano. In an interview with Scholastic, he said the idea for the book “came from my childhood when we used to have fireworks every year on Guy Fawkes Night… And I’d never lost that love of fireworks, so I thought it would be nice to do a story all about them.” Mr. Pullman suggests that theater is most valuable to us because it invites us to pretend together and that, by joining in, we make the journey something we share. The author provides audiences one undeniably adventuresome opportunity to do so, as his novel jumps from page to stage in this full-blown puppet opera. From aspiring adolescent firework makers who contend with pirate crews to an entrepreneurial albino elephant, nothing is too much for the imagination and it’s all a delectable dose of exactly what Mr. Pullman prescribes:
“Children need to go to the theater as much as they need to run about in the fresh air. They need to hear real music played by real musicians on real instruments as much as they need food and drink. They need to read and listen to proper stories as much as they need to be loved and cared for… If you deprive them of art and music and story and theater, they perish on the inside.”
Composer David Bruce is a native of Stamford, Connecticut who grew up in England and has a growing reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. Metropolis Ensemble has collaborated on multiple projects with Mr. Bruce, including
and most recently
He received his third Carnegie Hall commission
Steampunk
last year, and new commissions from The Silk Road Ensemble and the London Philharmonic in 2012. Mr. Bruce recalls his own connection to the stage and the creation of this new opera:
“Since my own childhood I have thought of the theatre as a colourful place of magic and fantasy and as I’ve grown older I am still attracted to those same aspects - for me there is not really a difference between children’s theatre and adult theatre - as I see it, it’s all ‘play’ and we are all children… In the theatre we allow ourselves to wonder - to question 'what if’ - and the question can sometimes be absurd or comical in nature, but other times be something much more profound. In a largely secular society, the theatre is one of the few places where we can still ask ourselves the big questions, and still feel wonder in all its aspects. My instinct as an artist is to set those big questions in a context that allows us to laugh, smile and relax.”
“The Firework Maker’s Daughter” makes its world premiere at Hull Truck in Yorkshire on March 23, 2013 and tours the UK at Linbury Studio and Royal Opera House in April, before coming to America and The New Victory Theater in May. Located in the heart of Times Square and 42nd Street, this historic jewel box theater (the oldest operating in New York City) is tricked out especially for families.
for children 8+ and imaginations of all ages!
Co-produced by
and Opera North in association with ROH2 and Watford Palace Theatre. Co-commissioned by The Opera Group and ROH2. Orchestral Partner: Metropolis Ensemble. Art credit for The New Victory Theater: Tom Slaughter