Listen to the Cry of the World, the inaugural project of the Cheswatyr Incubator (a collaboration between PS21, International Contemporary Ensemble, and the Cheswatyr Foundation), is a full-length piece exploring the idea of ecology and blackness by composer, drummer, and scholar Jessie Cox. Developed in close collaboration with Ensemble musicians, the experimental piece has undergone two workshops at the Ensemble’s headquarters in Downtown Brooklyn, which will be followed by a week-long residency at PS21 in July, culminating in this world premiere performance.

International Contemporary Ensemble / Jessie Cox

PS21 Center for Contemporary Performance

Matthew Aucoin’s Music for New Bodies (2024) is an uncategorizable work of music-theater: part opera, part song cycle, part vocal symphony. Based on poetry by Jorie Graham, the piece is a portrait of our moment in history as seen through the eyes of a cancer patient undergoing a drastic medical procedure. As the patient experiences the transformation of her own body, she meditates on questions that range from the personal to the cosmic: in a time when life is more and more virtual, what does it mean to have a body? And above all, after our species has poisoned the planet with uncountable toxins, can we still listen to what the earth has to tell us?

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“Music for New Bodies” at Tanglewood

Tanglewood Music Center

Conceived by performer, composer, and American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*) member Keir GoGwilt, Zarabanda Variations brings together a group of visionary composers, performers, and poets in a surprising and vibrant synthesis of Baroque, folkloric, and contemporary music of the American hemisphere. The members of the ensemble work across genres including traditional Mariachi and Baroque music, improvisation collectives in Mexico City and New York, and contemporary composition, creating new songs and dances inspired by the eclecticism of the zarabanda: a dance with Spanish, pre-Columbian American, and African origin stories. Woven in with the music is the poetry of Edgar Garcia, whose work maps the emergence of the Baroque through scenes of colonial and contemporary translation, emergency, and migration. Zarabanda Variations celebrates its New York debut at Lincoln Center.

“Zarabanda Variations” – Run AMOC

Lincoln Center

Conceived by AMOC* violinist Keir GoGwilt, Zarabanda Variations brings together a group of visionary composers, improvisers, and performers to draw inspiration from the musical histories of 16th- and 17th-century New Spain/Mexico. The zarabanda is a dance with supposed Spanish, American, and Arab origins, plausibly named from the Bantu “nsala-banda,” which eventually transformed into a courtly dance of the European baroque. Zarabanda Variations explores the archival gaps of early American music, creating a surprising and vibrant synthesis of European and LatinBaroque, folk, and contemporary musical traditions.

AMOC* presentation at Peabody Essex Museum of “Zarabanda Variations”

East India Square

Join us as AMOC* artists traverse centuries and landscapes in two programs that bring audiences from the Summer sunset to theatrical night. The first, at 7:00pm, includes Cassandra Miller’s About Bach—a patient meditation on melody, memory, and the passage of time at the day’s end—and Andrew McIntosh’s Little Jimmy, which combines field recordings, piano, and percussion to reflect Southern California’s terrifyingly sublime expanse.

Salon With Amoc*

Baryshnikov Arts Center

Adrianne Munden-Dixon is a violinist, improviser, and composer known for her “shapeshifting technical facility” (I Care If You Listen). Her work often explores the interaction of timbre, texture, and energy with a combination of playfulness and “white-knuckle energy” (Bandcamp Daily). She has given solo performances at Roulette Intermedium, the Dimenna Center, Princeton University and presented her music at the Darmstadt Summer Course and University of Georgia. She is a founding member of Desdemona and has recently worked with the JACK Quartet, Cassie Wieland, Leo Chang, David Bird, and filmmaker-pianist XUAN. Originally from Savannah, Georgia, she currently resides and is active in the Montreal and New York experimental scenes.

Carrie Frey and Adrianne Munden-Dixon: New Music for Viola and Violin

University of California, Berkeley

This chamber music arrangement—specially written for AMOC*—was first performed at The Met Cloisters in 2018 in the beautiful San Martín at Fuentidueña chapel. The New York Times called it “intimate, affecting and quietly rich with activism.” The piece, which celebrates Latin American poets and the voices of women, returns for a one-night-only engagement this holiday season at a different New York City landmark.

Carrie Frey

Events

Past events

Jul 25, 2026

International Contemporary Ensemble / Jessie Cox · PS21 : Center for Contemporary Performance

Aug 7, 2025

“Music for New Bodies” at Tanglewood · AMOC / American Modern Opera Company

About

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