May 25-27
Concert and workshops at Electroacoustic Music Festival FME- Pontificia Universidad Católica in Santiago, Chile
May 28-30
Performances at CheLA and Conservatorio Superior de Música Manuel de Falla in Buenos Aires
Illyrica performs works by Mozart, Bartok, Joel Hoffman, and a premiere by Margareta Ferek-Petrić!
More info TBA.
Illyrica performs works by Mozart, Bartok, Joel Hoffman, Margareta Ferek-Petrić, and more!
More info TBA.
Unheard-of//Ensemble is hosting the Collaborative Composition Initiative workshop (CCI//Sessions) in St. Louis, Missouri between August 10th and 15th, 2026. This CCI, we will be partnering with Christopher Stark and Washington University in St. Louis to workshop new premieres and then present concerts, installations, and creative happenings across the city.
Weissensee Klassik - Weissensee LAB with the world premiere of the Synesthetic Project. At 8 PM Graln's Tenn, Neusach 7. In collaboration with the artistic director of the WKF Christoph Zimper, the ensemble Synesthetic Project – which breaks down boundaries between music, movement, and space and thinks of concert formats as holistic experiences – explores, under the direction of Nika Baumann, the significance of folk music in its most original form. Tickets: www.oeticket.com or at the Weissensee Information.
Weissensee Klassik - Weissensee LAB with the world premiere of the Synesthetic Project. At 8 PM Graln's Tenn, Neusach 7. In collaboration with the artistic director of the WKF Christoph Zimper, the ensemble Synesthetic Project – which breaks down boundaries between music, movement, and space and thinks of concert formats as holistic experiences – explores, under the direction of Nika Baumann, the significance of folk music in its most original form. Tickets: www.oeticket.com or at the Weissensee Information.
Date and Time: May 23, 2026, 7PM Canoe Launch, 7:30PM Music
Join Unheard-of Ensemble, the Dredgers, and special guests video game jazz-funk ensemble Discocactus to open the season! Unheard-of opens the show with new premieres written for them by Annika Socolofsky and Discocactus's own keyboardist Ben Wallace. Unheard-of also performs new video game music arrangements from Ben and Unheard-of's violinist Matheus Souza. Discocactus closes out the night performing some of their hits joined by members of Unheard-of!
May 10, 2026
The Blanc, New York
World premieres of commissioned pieces for PinkNoise by:
Sofia Ouyang, Thanakarn Schofield, and Yifan Guo
Liza Lim - Inguz
Halim El Dabh - It is Dark and Damp on the Front
Date and Time: May 8th, 7:30pm
Concert Location: Hunter College Rehearsal Room
Unheard-of performs the music of hunter college graduate and undergraduate composition students.
One of the experimental double-bassist’s best-known early works is Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, which uses a recorded loop of a homeless man singing an improvised fragment, with rich string harmonies layered on top. A recording of the piece was made in 1993 with Tom Waits. Here, Contemporaneous brings the piece to life again.
Roulette @ 10:30 PM
503 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11217
NYU Paulson Building 570
Date and Time: April 27, 8pm
Unheard-of performs new music by NYU composition students from their undergraduate program written for the clarinet, violin, cello or Dahl instrumentation. Works explore everything from extended techniques to electronics.
Iva’s duo with saxophonist, guitarist, and composer David Crowell comes to Columbus, Ohio for the first time, performing original works.
Eco|Tonal: “Mythologies”7:00 pm at the Short North Stage's Green Room
1187 N High St, Columbus, OH 43201
Info TBA
Music by Iva Casian-Lakos, David Crowell, and Rob McClure
April 11, 2026 3:30pm
Elebash Hall at The Graduate Center, New York, NY
Michael Beil - Caravan
Itzá García - dynamic air density
Cathy Van Eck - Words, Words, Words
Unheard-of performs music by Liliya Ugay, Christian Quiñones, Jesse Jones, and Susanna Hancock on tour across Florida as well as student works by FSU and University of Florida composers. We also offer career workshops, instrumental workshops and chamber music coachings at UCF and FSU.
Guest Artist Recital | Opperman Music Hall
Unheard-of performs music by Liliya Ugay, Christian Quiñones, Jesse Jones, and Susanna Hancock on tour across Florida as well as student works by FSU and University of Florida composers. We also offer career workshops, instrumental workshops and chamber music coachings at UCF and FSU.
Sunday, March 8, 2026 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Unheard-of performs music by Liliya Ugay, Christian Quiñones, Jesse Jones, and Susanna Hancock on tour across Florida as well as student works by FSU and University of Florida composers. We also offer career workshops, instrumental workshops and chamber music coachings at UCF and FSU.
Free event. No registration required.
Students from the UMKC Conservatory Composers’ Guild present original works in the fifth concert of their season, featuring the Unheard-of Ensemble.
Film with Live Score / Music
Live film score performed by Ensemble Contemporaneous
David Lang and Bill Morrison have collaborated for nearly 25 years and darker is their tenth collaboration.
Lang and Morrison drew inspiration from a minimal score to create a film that, like the music, can exist both before and under the viewer’s eyelids: a slowly, lilting depiction of the sublime, where actors, dancers and acrobats reappear and then disappear back into a bubbling morass of time.
Tickets
Featuring performances by Unheard-of Ensemble
Alan Hankers, Assistant Professor; Celeste Oram, Adjunct Assistant Professor; Department of Music students
Celebrate the creativity and stylistic breadth of Vassar’s emerging composers. This interactive event offers audiences a unique opportunity to engage directly with the compositional process, from first sparks to finished scores, featuring live performances and open discussion in a collaborative workshop. Attendees will hear original student compositions performed by professional musicians and be invited to participate in conversations about inspiration, process, and artistic motivation. The symposium fosters an open exchange between composers, performers, and listeners, highlighting the visionary potential of the next generation of musical voices.
Date and Time: February 6, 2026, 8PM
Concert Location: Mise-en_Place, Harlem
Unheard-of explore a brief history of trios for clarinet, violin, and cello from first major works like Messiaen’s “Intermède” from Quartet for the End of Time and Ingolf Dahl’s Concerto a Tre, to recently written works including Meg Okura’s Phantasmagoria and Du Yun’s dreams – bend. Unheard-of is joined by Sputter Box, performing a set of their own trios and recent premieres by Onche Rajesh Ugbabe, Jane Kozhevnikova, and Brendan Sweeney.
Alan Hankers: String Quartet (premiere)
Jeffrey Mumford:To find in the glimmering air….. a buoyant continuity of layering blue (2010) for solo cello
Works by Luigi Boccherini, Franz Schubert, Béla Bartók, György Ligeti, Manuel de Falla, Giovanni Sollima, Oscar Antolí and traditional music from Lower Austria
Synesthetic Project Ensemble
Nika Bauman , flute, artistic director
Iva Casián-Lakoš cello
Tomaž Zevnik, clarinet
Marko Ferlan , guitar, double bass
Anna Bárbara Bonatto Dance
Samuel Adam Dance
Recommended for ages 10 and up
Inspired by Austrian and German fairy tales and myths, the music theatre ensemble Synesthetic Project transports audiences to a magical world of fantasy. Music, dance, and video intertwine in "Once Upon a Time" to create a story about diversity, tolerance, and understanding.
Duration approx. 60 minutes
supported by Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne
Synesthetic Project Ensemble
Nika Bauman , flute, artistic director
Iva Casián-Lakoš cello
Tomaž Zevnik, clarinet
Marko Ferlan , guitar, double bass
0h 45min, no break
Recommended for parents with babies
Attention parents who don't want to miss out on attending a classical concert! The "With Baby to the Concert" series allows parents with babies to enjoy music at the highest level – in a relaxed and informal atmosphere.
December 7, 2025, 7pm
yuniya edi kwon//PinkNoise
World premiere of a new commissioned work by yuniya edi kwon
New York, NY
tickets: $20, sold at the door
Unheard-of teams up with Tribeca New Music to premiere a NYSCA commission from Leila Adu and “best in score” work entwining by Paul Novak
Free admission, no tickets required
Brooklyn-based new music group Unheard-of//Ensemble will be in residency at the Oberlin Conservatory from November 13th through the 14th. A clarinet, violin, cello, and piano quartet specializing in programs that fuse music, multimedia, and interactivity on a number of levels, Unheard-of champions works by contemporary composers, presenting lectures and shows throughout the United States. Their residency will include a workshop and recording sessions of student compositions, a lecture spanning topics from working with composers to integrating technologies into performance, as well as this guest artist recital in Stull Recital Hall that will feature a world premiere by Oberlin composition faculty member Jesse Jones.
Touring across Ohio performing Jesse Jones – Quartet for Ye Olde of Tyme, Susanna Hancock, Aliayta Foon Dancoes – Cloud 9 ½, Andrew Burke, Robert McClure – contours snared in warp and weft, Meg Okura – Phantasmagoria, Christian Quiñones – My Eyes Devour the Internet, and Chris Stark’s Fire Ecologies as well as workshopping and recording works by students at Ohio University, Ohio State, and Oberlin.
Unheard-of: “Ohio Premieres”
7:00 pm at the Short North Stage's Green Room
1187 N High St, Columbus, OH 43201
Touring across Ohio performing Jesse Jones – Quartet for Ye Olde of Tyme, Susanna Hancock, Aliayta Foon Dancoes – Cloud 9 ½, Andrew Burke, Robert McClure – contours snared in warp and weft, Meg Okura – Phantasmagoria, Christian Quiñones – My Eyes Devour the Internet, and Chris Stark’s Fire Ecologies as well as workshopping and recording works by students at Ohio University, Ohio State, and Oberlin.
PROGRAM:
Jesse Jones – Johnstone Fund Premiere
Susanna Hancock – Johnstone Fund premiere
Aliayta Foon Dancoes – 2nd Story Premiere, Cloud 9 ½
Andrew Burke – 2nd Story Premiere
West Coast Premiere
Directed by Peter Sellars
Composed & Conducted by Matthew Aucoin
Texts by Jorie Graham
If you are captivated by the grandeur of orchestral music or the powerful storytelling of opera, Music for New Bodies is an unmissable event. This ambitious work by Matthew Aucoin, with poetry by Jorie Graham and directed by the visionary Peter Sellars, features the American Modern Opera Company creating a dramatic musical experience in the tradition of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.
A “song of the earth” for the present day, Music for New Bodies confronts the most pressing questions of our era: What is the future of humanity? How have we altered our planet? And, in an age dominated by disembodied AI, how can we reclaim the value of a life lived in a mortal, embodied human form? With its stirring symphonic intensity and thought-provoking lyrics, this piece offers a deep and urgent meditation on the challenges we face as a species.
Date: September 27th, 2025, 6:30PM Music, 6PM Canoe Launch
Location: Gowanus Dredgers Bunker, 2 19th St, Brooklyn, NY 11232
Join Unheard-of Ensemble, the Dredgers, and Christopher Stark for our Fire Ecologies album release party. The ensemble performs the entire album live followed by an afterparty featuring food and drink from some of our favorite Brooklyn breweries and distilleries.
Fire Ecologies is an album length Chamber Music America commission from Rome Prize-winning composer Christopher Stark, exploring America's changing landscapes in the face of climate change. The work incorporates field recordings of the 2020 California wildfires and sounds from Chris's travel across Montana, Oregon, and California as well as parts of Colorado as well as explorations of nature from America’s heartland surrounding Missouri. The album will be released on New Focus Recordings and available in-person at the show.
Location: Martel Recital Hall
Presented by members of the music department faculty.
