Admission: FREE
New Music New College is pleased to present the outstanding chamber music group, yMusic to open New Music New College NewFest in 2022. Experiencing the sound, virtuosity, and coordination of this group live is an experience we are eager to share with our audience, especially after circumstances interfered with our planned presentation of the group last year. yMusic has commissioned some of the most exciting composers working today, including Andrew Norman, Missy Mazzoli, and Gabriella Smith, and has also composed music together as a group. Their sound has attracted collaborations from artists such a Paul Simon, Bill T. Jones, and Sufjan Stevens, and this program will feature works from their extensive repertoire of specially designed and finely wrought chamber pieces.
yMusic, “six contemporary classical polymaths who playfully overstep the boundaries of musical genres,” (The New Yorker) performs in concert halls, arenas and clubs around the world. Founded in New York City in 2008, yMusic believes in presenting excellent, emotionally communicative music, regardless of style or idiom. “One of the groups that has really helped to shape the future of classical music,” (Fred Child, NPR’s Performance Today) their virtuosic execution and unique configuration (string trio, flute, clarinet, and trumpet) has attracted the attention of high profile collaborators—from Paul Simon to Bill T. Jones to Ben Folds—and inspired original works by some of today’s foremost composers, including Nico Muhly, Missy Mazzoli and Andrew Norman.
Last season, yMusic debuted a major new work, Difference, by Grawemayer and GRAMMY-winning composer Andrew Norman, set out on a US tour with singer-songwriter Bruce Hornsby, and released Ecstatic Science, their fourth full-length album. The recording, one of Pitchfork’s “6 New Albums You Should Listen to Now,” features music by Missy Mazzoli, Gabriella Smith, Paul Wiancko, and Caroline Shaw. Pitchfork praised the group for its “excellent taste in collaborating with composers” and for creating an album of “fluidly engaging” work. Due to global restrictions on nonessential travel and gatherings, yMusic took the 2020-21 season to work on their own, collaborative compositions, recorded remotely. The ensemble plans to release an album of original work in late 2021.