Village Voice: Questlove Puts The World On Shuffle At BAM
“On one level, the premise was anticipatory, predicting a future where concertgoers won’t have the time or patience for a low-concept, single-band show. On the other, one could see the evening’s roots: in the mixtape, the DJ set, the all-star benefit concert, the R&B revue. And it was this marriage of old and new—analog and digital—that permeated the night, a constant reminder that, as Q-Tip famously told his daddy, things go in cycles.”

Brooklyn Vegan: Questlove brought ‘Shuffle Culture’ to BAM
“For all of the pre-show talk about iPods, much of the vibe seemed to echo the beginning of the previous century. Metropolis Ensemble and Jeremy Ellis, the two acts that did most of the heavy lifting, focused on material that captured the pop of a record needle, the static of the AM radio band and the warbly tempos of an antique turntable.”

Capital: Questlove’s Post-iPod Humanism Brings Brilliant Cross-Genre Shuffling to the Concert Hall
“Meantime, a double string quartet pulled from the ranks of the Metropolis Ensemble – whose contributions had been mostly marooned from the other musicians during the night, truly shuffled off to the side—draped some gorgeous pizzicato playing of few simple arpeggios over the top. The arrangement wasn’t overcrowded; everything felt magically in balance – and yet there was a sense of group improvisation at work.”

NY Daily News: Brooklyn Shuffle
“We wanted to take some of the old and some of the new music and create a unique experience. It’s always interesting to take musicians with different backgrounds and have them play music none of them are really familiar with.”

Wall Street Journal: Questlove Shuffles to Brooklyn
“Questlove will join a genre-busting assortment of his favorite performers to offer a kaleidoscopic peek at his own aesthetic shuffle mode: from Rahzel (“the human beatbox”) to indie-rock wild card Deerhoof, to actress/industrial rocker/former porn star Sasha Grey—all tied together by the strings of the Metropolis Ensemble.”

Village Voice: Questlove’s Quest
“To Questlove, the concept of Shuffle Culture is something to be both celebrated and critiqued. It’s an approach to life that allows us to consume more information than ever before but at a rate that doesn’t always provide us the time to appreciate that knowledge.”

Additional mentions:
New York Times
The New Yorker
WNBC New York
Paper

The program got off to a firm start on Wednesday at the VIP preview with an unusual composition by Icelandic artist Örn Alexander Ámundason, “Kreppa: A symphonic poem about the financial situation in Iceland,” superbly performed by the Metropolis Ensemble, a New York chamber orchestra that specializes in new music and contemporary composition.

The result strangely and rather convincingly resembled a piece of early 12-tone music of the Viennese variety, perhaps because the human voice is naturally serial, repeating tonal patterns within a restricted range.

Despite the method of its composition, the music held its own and seemed to tell a story, perhaps at least as intelligible as the verbal ones in circulation among most commentators. Ámundason chose his instruments with an ear for music and some humor. The double bass at the beginning, representing a controversial Icelandic politician, gave way to a succession of instruments, often playing at the same time though by no means the same notes.

The chronological sequence ended with a ukulele, standing in for the openly lesbian prime minister elected in 2009, after the fall of the laissez-faire conservative government that had presided over the spectacular collapse of Iceland’s banks and financial system. The protestors, who came out in Iceland in force well before the Occupiers, are heard as a marimba, intoning with the clarity of bells the voices of the people in the streets.

Artistic Director Andrew Cyr conducted the extremely able musicians of the Metropolis Ensemble.

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A review of Metropolis Ensemble’s August 12, 2011 concert, Martial Arts Trilogy, by Steve Smith for The New York Times.

The Chinese composer Tan Dun… drew an overflow crowd to Damrosch Park on Friday night for a performance of his “Martial Arts Trilogy,” a splashy multimedia event derived from three popular film scores. Performed by the Metropolis Ensemble and presented by Lincoln Center Out of Doors, the project linked quasi-concerto suites from Mr. Tan’s music for “Hero,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “The Banquet” into an evening-length sequence, with scenes from the films projected on a screen behind the musicians.

…In “Hero Concerto” the soloist Ryu Goto played two violins — one tuned down to a violalike sob — over passages that jolted like Prokofiev and thundered like Basil Poledouris’s potent 1982 score for “Conan the Barbarian.” The cellist Dane Johansen performed the extensive, ravishing solos in Mr. Tan’s warm, eloquent “Crouching Tiger Concerto.”

In the concluding “Banquet Concerto,” originally fashioned for Lang Lang, the exciting young pianist Jiayi Sun barreled through Bartok-inflected combat scenes and tenderly caressed rhapsodic swells plainly inspired by Rachmaninoff.

…The Metropolis Ensemble, a talented freelance orchestra, responded with skill and exuberance to Mr. Tan’s thrusting arms and clutching fingers. Now and then his face, captured by a camera on his music stand, filled the screen overhead: like his film music, oversize and imperious yet clearly meant to entertain.

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“There’s something irresistibly raw and unpredictable about live performance, and when they’re of the caliber we’ll hear this week, few musical experiences can compare. Kicking off the week is a collection of pieces taken from three concerts.

Pianist / composer Timothy Andres pairs one of his own works, Everything Is An Onion, with a movement from Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata in a live performance taken from the Ecstatic Music Festival Marathon.”

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“The 2011 MATA Festival residency at (Le) Poisson Rouge spans three nights… Metropolis Ensemble closes out the festival on May 12 with works ranging from Brad Balliett and Elliot Cole’s hip-hopera, The Rake, to pieces from Chilean-born, 20-year old Remmy Canedo and New York’s own Ryan Carter.”

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“Creation stories formed the backdrop of the Kansas City Symphony’s inventive concert Friday at the Lyric Theatre… Dorman, a rising young Israeli composer, scored this three-movement work for full orchestra and 23 different percussion instruments, principally marimba and vibraphone. All 23 of which Grubinger played with breathtaking mastery… The audience got so wound up it applauded after every movement, and kept doing it in the second half.”

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“Pianist/composer Timothy Andres made it to numerous top-10 lists last year with his debut album, Shy and Mighty. He also raised eyebrows with an eclectic list of influences that ranges from Radiohead and LCD Soundsystem to today’s other guest, Steve Reich. We hear Andres’ distinctive musical voice, as he joins us to play live in our studio.”

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“On this specially curated week of Hammered! we spotlight a new album of piano music by New York-based composer Ryan Anthony Francis. The record features Bang On A Can pianist Vicky Chow, who, with Francis, joins Hammered! throughout the week with insights on this exquisite new body of piano music.

Among the diverse cast of characters looking over Francis’s compositional shoulder are author Haruki Murakami, artist M.C. Escher and poet Wilhelm Muller. You can hear their whispers: Escher’s interlocking motivic infinities in Francis’s Jacob’s Ladder, Murakami’s polished elegance in the Wind-Up Bird Preludes, and Muller’s prophetic solemnity in Consolations.”

Six Etudes for Piano

Consolations

Wind-Up Bird Preludes

Moonlight Fantasy

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The Symphony also will perform the U.S. premiere of Avner Dorman’s percussion concerto Frozen in Time. According to Dorman, the work was inspired by Earth’s geology.

“It’s divided into three movements: Indoafrica, Eurasia, and The Americas,” he said. “The percussionist Martin Grubinger asked me to write a concerto for him. He knew my music well and felt that my style was very global, and he thought that reflected our generation’s view of the world. So he asked me to write a truly global concerto.”

Indeed, Dorman’s work encompasses the entire planet and its very beginnings.

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“Some of you might know Elliot Cole as a composer of concert music, Contributing Editor here at Sequenza 21, or as a doctoral student at Princeton. But do you know Cole as a… rapper?

De Rerum, Elliot’s debut EP as a fast-talking MC, under the project moniker Oracle Hysterical, tackles lofty subject matter. According to Cole, “It’s a verse history of the world as I understand it (to c.2000BCE, after which, I discovered, history is mostly redundant), and also a general synthesis of, well, most every (nonfiction) book I’ve read in the last decade.

The EP is available for free download via his website. If you enjoy this taste of Oracle Hysterical, you can check out their performance of a retelling of the Rake’s Progress alongside the Metropolis Ensemble at the MATA festival in NYC on May 12.”

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