Photo and video highlights from New Music 101: Intro to Electronica are now live on the site, including behind-the-scenes photos from Le Poisson Rouge and full-length videos of the world premiere performance of Street Prayer, Jenny Lin's encore performance of Morning Tale, and Jakub Ciupinski's demonstration series Music from Air, his gesture-controlled system built out of two theremins and a laptop. Here's one of the demos:
You can also explore our archived concerts in our new photo and video galleries... an endless supply of inspiring musical works from the past three years!
One of the highlights of our upcoming concert, New Music 101, is a segment we're calling "Composing and Cocktails." Here's how it works. Music "waiters" (composer Jakub Ciupinksi and conductor Andrew Cyr) will greet you with an iPhone that serves as a real-time composition system, networking wirelessly to Metropolis Ensemble musicians on laptops.
Jakub elaborates:
They can suggest certain choices from the "menu" of melodies, textures, dynamics, and the audience can choose whatever they would like to hear from the live musicians in any given moment.
Interested in a preview? We invite you to download the music menu and get a sneak-peak at our selections. The possibilities are truly endless!
To celebrate our upcoming concert, New Music 101: Intro to Electronica, Metropolis Ensemble and composer Jakub Ciupinski are delighted to offer the mp3 of an inspiring electro-acoustic work by Jakub. "The Architect's Brother" premiered in 2006 at the Juilliard School's Peter Jay Sharp Theatre accompanying the choreography of Adam Weinert. You can download it here, absolutely free, for a limited time.
The Architect's Brother as performed by Vassilis Varvaresos (piano), Marko Pavlovic (celesta), Rachel Brandwein (harp), and Eugene Lifschitz (cello).
We've done a bit of spring cleaning around the Metropolis website in preparation for our 2009-2010 season, and we're excited to announce six upcoming events:
Complete details about each program will be unveiled in due time. Be sure to RSVP for Glimpses on May 6 at the stunning Americas Society for an evening of music demonstration and wine tasting sponsored by Miro Cellars!
The Groanbox Boys released their new album Gran Bwa at Metropolis Ensemble's concert, GROANBOX on January 28, 2009 at Le Poisson Rouge. The worldwide CD release party for Gran Bwa followed intermission at the concert, with a special performance by The Groanbox Boys. Get the album today on iTunes and CD Baby.
Gran Bwa is named after the Haitian Vodou loa (spirit) of the woods. Creole for great wood (from the French grand bois), Gran Bwa is the great spirit who resides deep in the woods and is associated with the gateway between the spirit world and the living world, the management of time, and medicinal healing. Read more...
Looking for more of The Groanbox Boys? The trio invites you to a special concert at Jalopy Theatre in Brooklyn, on January 24 (10:30pm, $10 cover). Check out their official site, MySpace, and YouTube.
Composer David Bruce shares insights about his new work, Groanbox, featuring Michael Ward-Bergeman on accordion, The Groanbox Boys, and the Metropolis Ensemble:
As a composer whose music has long incorporated folk elements, it has been an incredibly exciting challenge to write a piece for these two groups of outstanding musicians. I titled my piece simply Groanbox, (itself an old American term for the accordion), and wrote a piece which is not at all like a traditional 'concerto', but rather a piece in which the two groups merge as one, along with the two styles of music. I suppose it's a sort of imaginary folk-music I'm writing, played by the largest and most virtuoso village band you've ever seen. Read more...
This past year, David introduced A Bird In Your Ear, a new opera based on an old Russian folk tale originally published in 1903 called "The Language of the Birds," which received its world premiere in March 2008. In this scene below, a Bird with Golden Plumage (soprano Yulia Van Doren) arrives to thank Ivan (tenor Sungeun Lee) for saving her children. She offers to grant him a wish, and so he asks to understand the language of the birds.
You can watch more from this performance of A Bird in Your Ear by Bard College Orchestra and Choir conducted by James Bagwell, and learn more about the work. The opera will also be presented at the NYC Opera VOX Festival on May 1-2, 2009.
Looking for more from David Bruce? Carnegie Hall is featuring his commissioned work Piosenki, which is available as a free download. The work reflects on snapshots of childhood found in the poems of the Polish poet Julian Tuwim, and features a lagerphone similar to the Freedom Boot used by The Groanbox Boys in their upcoming concert with Metropolis Ensemble on January 28, 2009.
We're pleased to share a new documentary video about Metropolis Ensemble's world premiere of The Rite Remixed, last summer's adventurous collaboration exploding the boundaries of live electro-classical music. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the three concerts and watch exclusive interviews with the performers and composers!
Update: You can also experience the concerts through our highlights page with streaming audio, photo gallery, interviews, and press.
