On March 26th, saxophonist Charlotte Greve will perform a suite described as “ambitious,” “effortless,” and “exciting” by The New York Times with Sō Percussion at their loft in Brooklyn, as part of their Sō Laboratories series. Greve’s Sediments We Move, with Wood River, was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2021, and Greve also participated in NewAm’s Composer’s Lab.

On March 28th, Boston’s multi-nominated string ensemble A Far Cry will present “For” Seasons, a concert exploring Vivaldi’s Four Seasons through the lens of climate change. A Far Cry’s The Blue Hour, with Shara Nova, Rachel Grimes, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Angélica Negrón, and Caroline Shaw, was released by New Amsterdam Records and Nonesuch in 2022.

On March 30th, Alex Paxton will perform Od Ody Pink’d with Basel Sinfonietta. The program also features work from Missy Mazzoli, whose NewAm-released album, Vespers for a New Dark Age will turn 10 this year. Paxton’s Delicious will be released by New Amsterdam Records in May 2025.

Ten years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Vespers for a New Dark Age, by Missy Mazzoli, featuring Victoire, Glenn Kotche, and Lorna Dune. The record reimagines the traditional vespers prayer service and replaces the customary sacred verses with poems by Matthew Zapruder that contend with themes like technology, God and more. Mazzoli set out to create a more modern version of the vespers service, on her own terms, to explore the intersection of our modern technological age with the archaic formality of religious services. Vespers is meant to beg questions of its listeners -- What haunts us in this "new dark age"? What role does ritual play in our lives? Is there room for the supernatural in an increasingly technological world?

On April 1st, David Longstreth will present his latest album Song of the Earth, with Dirty Projectors and s t a r g a z e ensemble via a virtual listening party on Bandcamp. Song of the Earth will be released by New Amsterdam, Nonesuch, and Transgressive on April 4th, 2025.

On April 1st, ensemble Yarn/Wire will perform at The McKnight Center for the Performing Arts. Yarn/Wire’s Inner Garden, with Travis Laplante, was released on New Amsterdam Records in 2020.

Five years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Place by Ted Hearne. On Place, Pulitzer prize finalist, composer, singer and conductor Ted Hearne, who is “not afraid to bring politics and social justice issues into his music,” (WFMT) grapples with the generational conversation of gentrification in Place, an “explosive, restless, fragment-laden score,” (New York Times) written in collaboration with poet/activist Saul Williams. This expansive hybrid album produced by Nick Tipp features an all-star ensemble of musicians from the divergent worlds of hip-hop, R&B, experimental and noise music to contemporary chamber ensembles. Place is a multifarious meditation on white supremacy, fatherhood, displacement and loss, at once intimate and monumental.

On April 4th, GRAMMY-nominated vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth will perform at Lawrence University. Roomful of Teeth’s Rough Magic was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2023.

On April 4th, Ringown (a duo comprised of composers Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee) will perform at The Get Down alongside Foamboy and BendretheGiant. Shaw’s The Blue Hour, with A Far Cry, Shara Nova, Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, and Sarah Kirkland Snider, was released by New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records in 2022. This event is 21+.

On April 8th, GRAMMY-nominated vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth will perform at Carthage College in Kenosha. Roomful of Teeth’s Rough Magic was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2023.

On April 9th, GRAMMY-nominated vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth will perform at University of Wisconsin- Madison. Roomful of Teeth’s Rough Magic was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2023.

On April 11th, new music supergroup and inverted string quartet, Owls, will perform at UC Santa Barbara as part of their Arts & Lectures series. Owls’s Rare Birds will be released by New Amsterdam Records in March 2025.

On April 13th, new music supergroup and inverted string quartet, Owls, will perform at Cal Performances. Owls’s Rare Birds will be released by New Amsterdam Records in March 2025.

On April 15th, new music supergroup and inverted string quartet, Owls, will perform at Sacramento State as part of their New Millennium series. Owls’s Rare Birds will be released by New Amsterdam Records in March 2025.

On April 17th, Annika Socolofsky will premiere a new audio documentary, The Full Hundred, chronicling the fight for pay equity in the United States. Socolofsky’s Don’t say a word, with Latitude 49, was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2023.

One year ago, New Amsterdam Records released The Hem and the Haw by Alex Sopp. The Hem & The Haw is a collection of 10 songs written during a “fit of stillness” resulting from “the fresh batch of Time” experienced by Sopp in 2020, which allowed her to “become aware of the edges of things—in my case, where my body ends and the chair begins, where a bird call starts and a melody has always existed, where a cloud has always been a storm and the storm is me.” In slowing down and connecting with the stillness, Sopp found “that if I look long enough, rooms that I didn’t previously have access to emerge, floating in front of me like hard working tugboats, pulling behind them all the postcards that I’ve written to myself.” 

The Hem & The Haw was brought to life with the help of co-producer Thomas Bartlett (Yoko Ono, St. Vincent, Norah Jones) who “walked right into these landscapes and instantly understood not only how to elevate my vision but how to honor my quirks,” Sopp says. “He turned the lights on in dark corners, and he helped me to trust my instincts.” Woodwinds, synthesizers, strings, vocal layers, pianos, percussion, and creative production are brought together to create dynamic, intricately woven, and highly textured songs. Sopp encourages the listener to “walk into these layered dreamscapes for a moment and forget where you are; Or remember something about yourself you had forgotten.” Her goal, she says, is to “sweep you away even if just for a moment.”

Sopp’s songs find depth in their playfulness. The vocal work and lyrical expression are beautifully decorated by a wide palette of acoustic and electronic timbres. ‘Ah Said Rosita’ greets the listener with an evolving vocal wall of sound that grows in intensity with each repetition, the strong sense of grounding in ‘North Pole in Summer’ melts into an open sonic landscape, where instruments bloom from the central chord progression like a Glassian labyrinth playing out in double time. ´Like a Vine’ grows out of a central pulse while myriad synthesizers follow the lyrics down winding and unpredictable paths.

Five years ago, New Amsterdam released STICKLIP by Bec Plexus. Eight diverse composers from the Netherlands and the United States are among the more than 30 international genre-bending artists who helped create STICKLIP. That includes Arone Dyer of the inventive duo Buke and Gase, David T. Little—described by The New York Times as “having a knack for overturning music conventions”—and Richard Ayres, a British pioneer of electronic composition who studied with avant-garde composers Morton Feldman and Louis Andriessen.

On April 24th, GRAMMY-nominated vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth will perform at Cornell University. Roomful of Teeth’s Rough Magic was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2023.

On April 25th, Javanese vocalist Peni Candra Rini will perform at Kronos Quartet’s annual Kronos Festival, at San Francisco Jazz. Rini’s Wulansih and Wani were released by New Amsterdam Records in 2024, and Jejak & Steps in 2025.

On April 25th, trombonist Kalia Vandever will perform at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts in Knoxville. Tennessee. Vandever’s Regrowth was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2022, and recently she was featured on Darian Donovan Thomas’s A Room With Many Doors: Night, released in 2024.

Ten years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Render, by GRAMMY-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth. Render has been praised as encompassing "bounteous diversity and ingenuity" (Tiny Mix Tapes) and as "a veritable embarrassment of vocal riches" (Textura). Building on the group's widely acclaimed first album, which won the 2014 GRAMMY for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance and included Caroline Shaw's Pulitzer Prize-winning Partita for 8 Voices, Render delights and surprises.

The album features compositions from Missy Mazzoli, William Brittelle, Wally Gunn, Brad Wells, Caleb Burhans, and Eric Dudley, and has received a 2016 GRAMMY nomination for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance.

The new collection of works is consistently, unstintingly gorgeous, inviting listeners into an unimaginably varied sound world, all while showcasing Roomful of Teeth's trademark virtuosity. Render could be considered a companion to the group's first record - it features the same singers, engineer, cover artist, and some of the same composers as the first, and it includes a remarkable multi-movement work spread across the album - but this second record is very much in a class of its own.

On May 1st, composer and vocalist Nathalie Joachim will perform a solo set of music from Ki moun ou ye, released in 2024 by New Amsterdam and Nonesuch records, at AURA in Portland.

On May 1st, trombonist Kalia Vandever will perform at Bemis Center for the Arts in Omaha. Vandever’s Regrowth was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2022, and recently she was featured on Darian Donovan Thomas’s A Room With Many Doors: Night, released in 2024.

Five years ago, New Amsterdam released The Nail House EP by Composer’s Lab participant iT Boy. iT Boy is the solo electronic project of composer and instrumentalist Theo Baer. His individual approach to melodic sound is influenced heavily by an eagerness to adapt and experiment with a variety of genres. The resulting pieces reflect an eclectic upbringing in musical performance. These compositions illustrate an intimate and vulnerable narrative channeled through the manipulation of tape loops, synthesizers, keyboards, and other assorted mostly analog voices. This album was released as part of New Amsterdam’s Windmill Series.

On May 16th, trombonist and composer Kalia Vandever will perform at My Body My Festival in Washington DC, funding abortion access across the country. Vandever’s Regrowth was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2022, and recently she was featured on Darian Donovan Thomas’s A Room With Many Doors: Night.

On May 17th, Aditya Prakash will present ROOM-i-NATION in London at the Southbank Theatre. ROOM-i-NATION features music from Prakash’s album ISOLASHUN, released by New Amsterdam Records in 2023.

Five years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Methods Body’s self-titled album. “Dark twin, meet your light twin.” That’s how musicians and best friends John Niekrasz and Luke Wyland were first introduced to each other in 2007. It’s an apt description of the duality and synergy of their musical project Methods Body. Using keys/electronics and percussion, the two maximize the duo configuration to create music at once primal and futuristic. Overflowing with polyrhythms and layers of microtonal melodies, the two suites on Methods Body’s self-titled debut conjure a sense of traveling through space and time to a prismatic, post-human landscape.

One year ago, New Amsterdam Records released Mazz Swift’s The 10000 Things: Praise Songs for the iRiligious. The 10000 Things: PRAISE SONGS for the iRiligious is influenced by Swift’s relationship with the Ghanaian concept of Sankofa (to “go back and fetch it”). The Work Songs and Spirituals of the enslaved people that Swift uses as jumping-off points for improvisation and composition serve to connect with their musical ancestors, creating a work that lives in the present moment while acknowledging the past and pushing their sonic palette towards the future. The 10000 Things is densely produced with synths, electronic percussion, experimental electronics, powerfully wailing violin improvisations, and commanding vocals which all come together to create a work that is deeply moving and sonically explorative, yet rooted deeply in tradition.

Fifteen years ago, New Amsterdam released William Brittelle’s Mohair Time Warp. Mohair Time Warp is the brainchild of composer/performance artist William Brittelle. It is a full-length, lip-synched (when live) art-music concept album debut featuring an 8-person, mixed rock/classical ensemble. Possible descriptions include: a punk-classical collage version of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds; a marriage of Basquiat, Prince and Debussy; and/or Captain Beefheart put through an art-pop filter with a well-dressed, wildly charismatic lip-synching frontman.

The electronic components of these works mainly focus on vintage synthesizers and rudimentary drum machines, while the string playing most often buoyant and propulsive with interspersing moments of tenderness and calm. The pieces in the Future Shock series focus on visceral impact and power, while the prologue Acid Rain on the Mirrordome, the title track, and Loon Birds in Meshed Crystal attempt to capture a sense of catharsis and longing (while still being, at times, joyous). The title of the project is a reference to the Chambered Nautilus, a fascinating marine creature inhabiting a complex and beautiful shell. The inner chambers of the animal’s shell display a nearly perfect equiangular spiral, and it is often captured and killed for it’s beauty. Most uniquely, the Chambered Nautilus is comprised of both organic and inorganic material, with the line between being and shell often blurred to the point of becoming indiscriminate. This fluid duality (if there is such a thing) in effect mirrors the relationship between strings and electronics in this project, with both elements coexisting to the point of becoming one.

Fifteen years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Matt Marks’s The Little Death, Vol. 1. It is an ambitious work that fuses bombastic electro-pop hooks, frenetically chopped break beats, hypnotic lyrics, and apocalyptic Christian imagery. Holding these disparate elements together is an unconventional narrative that follows two characters, Boy (Matt Marks) and Girl (Mellissa Hughes), on a journey through the world of Fundamentalist Evangelism, as they cope with repressed sexuality in a modern world. The sample-heavy work draws on musical references that echo the character’s sexual-religious confusion, including pop songs and gospel standards with evocative titles (“He Touched Me” and “When God Dips His Love In My Heart”). Marks took most of the sampled material from his own collection of 1970s gospel albums and classic hip-hop and soul recordings. Using a DIY approach, he produced the album using only a couple of microphones and a laptop running Ableton Live.

The album was described as “cheerily seductive” and the live theatrical performance at St. Mark’s Church a “consistently affecting evening of theater” by Steve Smith in The New York Times and “unabashedly boppy, baroquely multireferential, then suddenly sentimental” by Time Out New York theater critic Helen Shaw. Steve Smith also found Melissa Hughes’s presence “magnetic” and her rendition of “He Touched Me” to be “particularly riveting,” while TheAwl.com found the audience at St. Mark’s Church to be “under her cyrpto-erotic-religious spell.” The Little Death, Vol. 1 was also one of Time Out NY’s Top Ten Classical albums of 2010 and “I Don’t Have Any Fun” was listed as one of Huffington Post’s Top Ten Alternative Art Songs of the Decade alongside works by Sufjan Stevens, Sigur Ros, and Joanna Newsom.

Fifteen years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Someone Will Take Care of Me, by Corey Dargel. The double CD is a “brilliant collection” (WNYC) comprised of song cycles adapted from Dargel’s acclaimed music-theater pieces, Thirteen Near-Death Experiences and Removable Parts. The cycles explore the hypochondria and amputation respective, and “in the end his results are arresting precisely because of their unusual points of origin” (Molly Sheridan, CD liner notes).

Thirteen Near-Death Experiences is an art-pop song cycle about hypochondria featuring Dargel’s vocals accompanied by amplified chamber ensemble. The songs touch upon various health issues with titles like “Ritalin” and “Sometimes a Migraine is Just a Migraine,” but also touch “on larger questions of love, loneliness, and alienation” (New York Times). These songs have been described as “quirky, lyrical tales of dysfunction and delusion” (eMusic) and “wryly witty and often hilarious, crafted with a charming, angular lyricism” (Chicago Classical Review). The cycle is accompanied by ICE and David T. Little on drums, and was premiered at Performance Space 122 in New York, where Jayson Greene of 17dots praised his balance and control over playfulness and empathy.

Removable Parts, a series of love songs about voluntary amputation, makes up the second CD of Someone Will Take Care of Me. The New York Times calls it “almost perversely pleasurable” and sees the amputation motif as “problematic metaphor” that Dargel handles “with an intelligent grace that is as moving as it is impressive.” Dargel’s synergistic emotional delivery in Removable Parts has been described as “intense, heartfelt, funny, emotional” (Parterre Box), “at once uproarious and harrowing” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker), “with unflinching directness but also with grace and empathy” (All Music). The cycle in its theatrical form won the 2007 New York Innovative Theater award for Best Performance-Art Production.

Ten years ago, New Amsterdam Records released NOW Ensemble’s Dreamfall. Sprawling in scope and ambition, the 76-minute album features seven composers - Scott Smallwood, Mark Dancigers, John Supko, Nathan Williamson, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Andrea Mazzariello and Judd Greenstein - and is by far the most expansive and ambitious record for the group to date.

Following the release of composer Missy Mazzoli's opera Song from the Uproar in 2012 and the critically-acclaimed collection Awake in 2011, Dreamfall stakes out a striking new landscape for the group. Ranging from ferocious and grooving to meditative and beautiful, the album is similar to the life of the ensemble itself over the past few years: pulsing with an urgent message, a desire to open up, be heard, and to share the sounds of unmediated musical worlds.

For the past 10 years, NOW Ensemble has worked tirelessly to craft a tightly-honed aesthetic. Dreamfall is the sound of the group letting go of the reins just a little and allowing a more free exchange between the conscious and subconscious.  In the liner notes for the album, NOW Ensemble composer and guitarist Mark Dancigers explains that "dreamfall" is an outlook on the world.  He writes: "It is a state of immense freedom... The sounds on this record reflect this freedom, this sense of something a little out of our hands, and, beyond all else, the practice of making music that is NOW Ensemble."

Five years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Breaking and Entering by Molly Joyce. The album features Joyce cultivating disability within the human body through a series of electro-acoustic works written and performed by Joyce on her instrument of choice — the electric vintage toy organ.

One year ago, New Amsterdam Records released Julius Eastman, Vol. 4: The Holy Presence, by the renowned ensemble Wild Up. The record was nominated for a GRAMMY Award. The Holy Presence is the latest entry in Wild Up’s ongoing anthology exploring the works of Julius Eastman, the late composer who not only took innovative approaches to orchestration and musical notation but injected a defiantly Black, queer perspective into the overwhelmingly white, straight world of classical music.

On June 28th, Riot Ensemble will premiere Alex Paxton’s “Shrimp BIT Baby Face” at Manchester Classical, as part of their “Coral Formations” concert. Paxton’s Delicious, featuring a recording of “Shrimp BIT Baby Face” will be released by New Amsterdam Records in May 2025.

Ten years ago, New Amsterdam Records released killer BOB sings by experimental noise collective JOBS. killer BOB sings has been called "a killer album" by GrimmusiK and "an aural experience that is at once deeply personal and wholly alien" by IMPOSE. Addition, the music video to the track "Patient Angel" was lauded as "a track and video that demand your patience" by IMPOSE and one that "takes you for a ride" by PopMatters. Since forming in 2008, JOBS has quickly established itself as one of the most exciting new forces within the thriving experimental music scene in Brooklyn. Comprised of drummer Max Jaffe, bassist Rob Lundberg, and guitarist Dave Scanlon, the group (formerly known as  Killer Bob) has set itself apart with its charged performances - dripping with intensity and wild spontaneity.

Integrating blasts of industrial noise with mechanically incisive rhythms and pop structures, killer BOB sings showcases the band's influences by way of their virtuosity. Vocals lay over ominously precise guitar work and percussive textures that range from the unhealthily organic to the speechlessly robotic. Distorted grooves pull themselves out of these structures. In the studio, the band worked in intensive bursts, for 12-16 hours a day. Fields pushed them to create more and more, giving each member nightly "homework" assignments, such as: "write a ballad and a pop hit." The effect of all this work was to create a more honed and focused band, and - in fact - the resulting album can be heard as JOBS' version of a tightly-constructed pop album - in a world where the fractured "Rhythm Changes" is a club banger and the haunting "Spriiiiiiiiing" a crooner ballad.

More than anything though, killer BOB sings is a supremely vital document of a band pushing itself to evolve and develop. In the words of one concertgoer, JOBS is "unstoppable," and while that may be true, killer BOB sings shows that the group can at least slow down long enough to capture that unstoppability in album form.

Five years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Terrain, by Jacob Cooper. The richly talented “maverick electronic song composer” (New Yorker) Jacob Cooper propels us into a luscious journey with Terrain. Drenched in otherworldly vocals, processed strings and elaborate electronic orchestrations, these three expansive tracks brim with intricately pulsing soundscapes that lull us into a tranquil meditative state. Terrain transports us to a new dimension where time slows down as we bask in the soft, pale glow of infinite timbral layers.

One year ago, New Amsterdam Records released Wulansih, by Javanese vocalist Peni Candra Rini. Kronos Quartet's David Harrington, a frequent collaborator of Rini, recently called her “one of the world's greatest singers”, and on Wulansih she places her voice in conversation with a wide array of experimental and traditional musicians, including Andy McGraw, Lester St. Louis, Shahzad Ismaily, John Priestley, Curt Sydnor, and many others. Produced by Ismaily at New York's Figure 8 Recording, Wulansih creates a world all its own.

The 8 songs on Wulansih exert a deep sense of spiritual calm and act as, in Rini’s words, “a reminder that you are still human, listening to expressions of other humans.” Her music is deeply inspired by the poetry of Rumi and Hafez, Wayang Kulit (Indonesian shadow play), and Serat, the tradition of Sufi thought in Central Javanese court poetry. Rini says that Wulansih aims to “express my inner feelings, my soul, to provide inspiration to younger Indonesian composers, and to introduce Indonesian new compositions to new global audiences.”

Fifteen years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Television Landscape by Co-Artistic Director William Brittelle. Since dropping in the summer of 2010, the record has attracted serious critical attention. The New York Times hailed it as “a set of flamboyant, richly orchestrated art-rock songs”; Time Out New York, in a 4-star review, called it ”a glorious reclamation of lush sounds that crusty critics have vilified for years… Like the finest AM gold, Television Landscape soothes even as it dazzles”; and Kevin Berger of the LA Times celebrated the album as evoking “an earthquake-weather mood along a painterly musical landscape of searing rock.” In the summer of 2011, the album’s closing track The Color of Rain was chosen forThe Believer magazines prestigious annual music issue.

Television Landscape adheres to no limitations of style, genre, or instrumentation. Instead, it is a classically- trained composer’s work to reconcile the disparity between the music he cherishes and the music he enjoys. Also the former frontman to NYC post-punk band The Blondes, Brittelle’s vast and varied influences – from Prince’s Purple Rain and The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds to Ravel, Debussy, and Mingus – come together seamlessly on three-year project Television Landscape. The music is fully notated in every regard and played on both electric and acoustic instruments to reflect a modern day orchestra, complete with ornate string arrangements, epic guitar solos, vintage synthesizers, a children’s choir, and jazz horn sections all performed by esteemed musicians/members of The Long Count, So Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, NOW Ensemble, The Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Dirty Projectors collaborator Matt Marks and more. The record was produced, mixed, and mastered by Lawson White at Clinton Recording.

Dynamic track “Vivid Culture” opens and quickly addresses the album’s themes of environmental destruction, depersonalization, and ensuing catharsis with lyrics based on Brittelle’s own poetry. Single “Dunes of Vermillion” follows, melding Brittelle’s auto-tuned vocals with soaring strings, while 80′s soft rock-inspired ballad “Sheena Easton” features string plucks, a children’s choir, and slick solos from lead guitarist Mark Dancigers. Later, the title track explores a detached, despondent existence – a contrast to the grand album closer “The Color of Rain,” a poignant-yet-optimistic look toward the future. Ultimately, the album is an ambitious, heartfelt endeavor to intertwine Brittelle’s own tumultuous past with the environmental and spiritual crises currently facing our culture and world.

Fifteen years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Ted Hearne’s Katrina Ballads. Katrina Ballads is New York composer Ted Hearne’s hour-long dramatic song cycle inspired by the tragic events surrounding Hurricane Katrina. This work uses entirely primary-source texts to paint a rich musical portrait of that devastating and telling week in September 2005. Setting the words of flood survivors, relief workers, politicians and celebrities, including Anderson Cooper, Barbara Bush, Kanye West, and George W. Bush’s iconic “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” Hearne creates a cutting-edge musical experience and a vivid look into America’s darkest hours. The music is rhythmic, theatrical, and American to the core, possessing an edgy post-minimalist drive and a deep jazz influence. It is a moving performance, challenging us to remember and reflect upon our own history. In an article from the Los Angeles Review of Books, the author called it “creatively ambitious, genre-smashing music distinctive not only for its attention to topical issues, but also for its uncommon way of dealing with them.” Along with Time Out New York who simply categorized it as a "must-hear album."

One year ago, New Amsterdam Records released A Room With Many Doors: Night by NewAm Artistic Associate Darian Donovan Thomas. A Room With Many Doors is a dizzying, kaleidoscopic, and epic narrative journey of self discovery that meets the listener at the end of a series of “experiments in heartbreak”. The songs on ARWMD explore questions of introspection (“what do we want to return to? Do we want to return to one person in particular, or do we want to return to an older version of self? A more stable self?”) from multiple angles. Darian’s virtuosic sense of scale and texture, as well as his lyrical vulnerability make ARWMD a record that invites multiple listens and explorations. He is joined by an impressive cast of collaborators including: Alfredo Colón, Ben Chapoteau-Katz, Kalia Vandever, Taja Cheek (L’Rain), and Phong Tran.

Five years ago, we released Robert Honstein’s Soul House, performed by Hub New Music. Memory, nostalgia, longtime associations, and enduring relationships: these are the raw materials from which Soul House, the recording by the vital Boston ensemble Hub New Music, was constructed. The recording comprises a single work by New York composer Robert Honstein, who formed a close bond with Hub during a period when he lived and worked in Boston.

Five years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Wally Gunn’s The Ascendant and Michael Harrison’s Just Constellations, performed by GRAMMY-award winning vocal ensemble, Roomful of Teeth. “It's like Roomful of Teeth on different sides of the planet,” describes artistic director Brad Wells regarding the simultaneous release of a propulsively rhythmic The Ascendant alongside the immense resonance of Just Constellations.

One year ago, New Amsterdam Records and Eclipse Projects released Big Majestic by Ellen Reid. It’s a transformative and meditative work that finds Reid exercising her towering compositional command and casting her unique voice into fresh shapes as it traverses the worlds of ambient, jazz, post-rock, and minimalism.

At times mystical and psychedelic or solemn and reverent, Big Majestic is a generous and transportative album. Throughout, Reid revels in the freedom of space and the power of gesture — crafting a marvelous and versatile work that does justice to these beloved and wondrous natural sanctuaries.  Says Reid: “Big Majestic is an invocation — this theme is the heart of the composition. It invites you to sink into the resonance of your surroundings.”

Five years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Planetary Candidate by Michi Wiancko. Planetary Candidate is an album of bold new compositions for solo violin commissioned by Michi Wiancko, “an alluring soloist with heightened expressive and violinistic gifts” (Gramophone Magazine) whose own compositions have  been described as “silvery and evocative” (The New Yorker). This project documents her journey as a violinist allowing her to “manifest and passionately inhabit a multitude of musical worlds.” Through this set of spectacular new works for violin, Wiancko celebrates her nearly four-decade relationship to an instrument that, when she plays it, “feels like an act of breathing.”

Five years ago, New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records released Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered. Snider’s Mass, with a libretto by poet/writer Nathaniel Bellows, is a celebration of, and an elegy for, the natural world—animals, plants, insects, the planet itself—an appeal for greater awareness, urgency, and action. Originally commissioned by Trinity Church Wall Street, this recording features the English vocal ensemble Gallicantus conducted by Gabriel Crouch.

Fifteen years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Cathedral City, by Victoire. Since dropping in September 2010, the record has garnered significant attention. Pitchfork gave it a 7.8 and remarked that “Victoire condense moments of focused beauty and quiet conviction from the pandemic distractions of modern life.” The New York Times said of the album, “[Victoire] embraces an intoxicating blend of sensibilities in this set of eight consonant, dark-hued and sometimes eerie meditations.” ALARM Magazine described Cathedral City‘s boundary-pushing as “completely natural,” and NPR remarked concisely that “It’s just good music.”

Mazzoli founded Victoire in 2007 and the ensemble of Brooklyn-based, classically-trained women has proven to be the perfect vehicle for her distinctive blend of post-rock dreamscapes and quirky minimalism. Deemed “one of the most surprising composers now working in New York” by The New York Times and “Brooklyn’s Post-Millennial Mozart” by Time Out New York, Mazzoli fuses lo-fi electronics, keyboards, strings and winds into works that are extraordinarily complex yet delicately beautiful.

With each listen, Cathedral City‘s enigmatic mix of both the unexpected and familiar reveals itself differently and with new emotion. The album opens with gentle keyboards pulsing against sweetly soaring clarinet and strings, downward double bass slides and heady moments of discord on ”A Door into the Dark.” Later, Melissa Hughes’ angelic vocals float over dance floor-ready beats on title track “Cathedral City,” and Bryce Dessner provides rich electric guitar to ”A Song for Mick Kelly.” On ”A Song for Arthur Russell,” vocal loops (provided by William Brittelle) and syncopated rhythm hold steady as each instrument winds and shifts with casual surprise, while closer ”India Whiskey” melds tape, string harmonics and organ to stirring effect.

One year ago, New Amsterdam Records released Wani, by Javanese vocalist Peni Candra Rini. In contrast to the deep introspection and ambient calm of Wulansih, Wani is full of playful noise, rambunctious energy, and a deep sense of the unexpected. The album was created by giving the recorded musicians “very basic outlines” of the songs, improvising around those frameworks in the studio, and giving producers John Dieterich (Deerhoof, Mary Halvorson, Sufjan Stevens, Booker Stardrum) and Chris Botta (Yaeji, Emily Wells, the JACK Quartet, Valee, Shahzad Ismaily) “free reign to produce the tracks as they liked.” The result is a loud, fun, chaotic, energizing, and mesmerizing collection of songs that explore themes from traditional Javanese art, scripture, culture, politics, and shadow play. Wani features performances by Satomi Matzusaki, Curt Sydnor, Andy McGraw, John Priestley, I Gusti Putu Sudarta, Justin Alexander, Putu Hiranmayena, and many more.

Five years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Travis Laplante’s Inner Garden, with Yarn/Wire. This nirvana-inducing three-movement work, which showcases Laplante’s passion for seamlessly merging improvisation and composition, was inspired by a dreamlike state he experienced shortly after receiving the commission from Yarn/Wire, a beloved ensemble he’d shared many stages with in Williamsburg and Lower Manhattan.

One year ago, New Amsterdam Records released a t l a s, by Charlotte Jacobs. Jacobs’ music has been called “fresh and different… a sonic adventure” (Bob Boilen, All Songs Considered) and her voice has been praised as “a singer-songwriter’s dream” (Atwood Magazine). The 9 songs on a t l a s  play out like a half-remembered Greek epic of avant-pop proportions, piecing together earthy woodwinds, old-school synths, and shifting rhythmic patterns that enhance her myth-inspired spoken word and bilingual vocals, delivered in Dutch and English.

Throughout a t l a s Jacobs explores themes of mythology, religion, and cultural structures while empowering listeners to  “become their own saviors in order to navigate the challenges in life.” Lead singles ‘mala’ and ‘CYTMH’ veer from glossy hi-fi to scuzzy lo-fi at any moment as earthy woodwinds, old-school synths, and shifting rhythmic patterns enhance Jacobs’ myth-inspired spoken word and bilingual vocals, delivered in Dutch and English.

Fifteen years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Penelope, by Co-Artistic Director Sarah Kirkland Snider. Inspired by Homer’s epic poem, the Odyssey, Penelope is a meditation on memory, identity, and what it means to come home. Suspended somewhere between art song, indie rock, and chamber folk, the music of Penelope moves organically from moments of elegiac strings-and-harp reflection to dusky post-rock textures with drums, guitars and electronics, all directed by a strong sense of melody and a craftsman’s approach to songwriting.

Penelope originated as a music-theater monodrama, co-written by McLaughlin and Snider in 2007-2008 and commissioned by the J. Paul Getty Center. In the work, originally scored for alto/actor and string quartet, a woman’s husband appears at her door after an absence of twenty years, suffering from brain damage. A veteran of an unnamed war, he doesn’t know who he is and she doesn’t know who he’s become. While they wait together for his return to himself, she reads him the Odyssey, and in the journey of that book, she finds a way into her former husband’s memory and the terror and trauma of war. In 2009 Snider re-conceived Penelope as a song cycle, expanding and tailoring it to the unique talents of vocalist Shara Worden and the chamber orchestra Signal, and collaborating with programmer Michael Hammond on sound design.

The album has met tremendous critical success. Pitchfork rated it at a 8.3, calling it a“gorgeous piece of music, but it is more– it is also a hauntingly vivid psychological portrait, one that explores a dark scenario with a light, almost quizzical touch, finding poetic resonances everywhere.” NPR remarked that Penelope “deftly weaves pop and classical” with a score that is “inventive and subtle, with a mix of watery, undulating strings, guitars, percussion and electronics that submerges you completely within the story.” The album has also been called “achingly stark…easily the most beautiful album of the year” (The Indie Handbook) and “accomplished and remarkable… gorgeous and soul-stirring” (Textura). It was also hailed as one of the 5 Best Genre-Defying Albums of the Year (2010) by NPR, and named #3 favorite album of 2010 by Textura.

Five years ago, New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records released Tristan Perich’s Drift Multiply. Drift Multiply, Perich’s largest work to date, is performed by fifty violins and fifty loudspeakers and is conducted by Douglas Perkins. Scored as one hundred individual lines of music, the piece blends violins and speakers into a cascading tapestry of tone, harmony, and noise. The violins perform from sheet music, while the speakers are each connected to custom-built circuit boards programmed to output 1-bit audio, the most basic digital waveforms made of just ones and zeroes. “I am interested in the threshold between the abstract world of computation and the physical world around us,” Perich explains.

Fifteen years ago, New Amsterdam Records released Janus’s i am not. i am not is the debut record of janus, the acclaimed flute, viola, and harp trio, featuring all-new works by Cameron Britt, Ryan Brown, Caleb Burhans, Anna Clyne, Angélica Negrón, and Jason Treuting. The “beguiling new CD” (Steve Smith, Time Out New York) was met with critical success, named a NJ Star Ledger Notable 2010 Classical CD, featured on NPR’s Deceptive Cadence blog where it was called “intricate and fantastical,” and hailed as a “focused, accomplished release with a subtle affect; the intimate sound of the instruments, the close miking and the lean profile of the group give it a light, almost casual immediacy, but the playing and the fine choice of material develops a quiet and full power over the course of the disc” (The Big City).

janus is the Brooklyn-based trio of flutist Amanda Baker, violist Beth Meyers, and harpist Nuiko Wadden. Their debut album, i am not, brings together six pieces, all by New York City composers, that defy common expectations for this familiar grouping. It opens with the voices of Amanda, Beth, and Nuiko, set against a gently pulsing background in Jason Treuting’s title composition, and proceeds through kaleidosopic scores by Caleb Burhans, Angélica Negrón, Anna Clyne, Cameron Britt and Ryan Brown, all tailored to the virtuosity and interpretive élan of these three gifted players. The electrifying and revelatory results challenge the listener at every turn: as the group flits effortlessly between genres, it conjures a soundworld that is untethered yet consistent, classic yet definitively 21st-century. Electronic samples, banjo, and found instruments make their way into the musical fabric. Recorded and produced by Lawson White, i am not envelops the listener with warm, yet precise and highly present sounds.

Fifteen years ago, New Amsterdam Records released sweet light crude, by Newspeak. Newspeak is a “potent” (Alex Ross), “fierce” (Time Out NY) and “innovative” (New York Magazine) politically-charged octet, working under the direction of composer David T. Little and clarinetist Eileen Mack. Named after the thought-limiting language in George Orwell’s 1984, Newspeak explores the grey area where art and politics mix, seeking to reconsider, redefine, and ultimately reclaim the notion of socially engaged music. David T. Little describes the ensemble as “forged in the fires of Black Sabbath and Louis Andriessen, Dead Kennedys and Frederic Rzewski.” On sweet light crude, Newspeak brings stories of hope, loss, inaction and rage. Throughout, the group shows its unique ability to reach the transcendental highs of a great rock band while maintaining the lyricism, dexterity, and nuanced intricacy of classical chamber music.

The disc begins with Oscar Bettison’s furious “B&E (with aggravated assault)” – a mixed-meter revolution – followed by Stefan Weisman’s understated, enigmatic and passive “I Would Prefer Not To.” Passivity turns to obsession in David T. Little’s dark and crooked love song to oil, “sweet light crude,” which gives way to a glimmer of hope in Missy Mazzoli’s “In Spite of All This,” the quiet before the storm. That storm comes in PatMuchmore’s apocalyptic, Nine Inch Nails-infused “Brennschuss”, which roars upon the listener with Pynchon-esque imagery, with guest vocals from Morean of the German black metal band Dark Fortress. When the storm clears, we’re left with a dust bowl, and the sounds of the howling wind, setting the scene for Caleb Burhans’s “Requiem for a General Motors in Janesville, WI,” which brings the album to its cathartic conclusion.

Five years ago, New Amsterdam Records released The Grey Land by Numinous and Joseph C. Phillips. Featuring soloists soprano Rebecca L Hargrove and narrator Kenneth Browning, the undefinable work, written in Phillips signature "mixed music" style, chronicles a single Black mother and her son for a dynamic exploration of race, class and power in 21st century America.

As Phillips explains, The Grey Land is "a story of a Black mother trying to survive the reality in this land that doesn’t fully see her continued hope: that the great American experiment will one day become a belonging place where anyone can dream of 'stillness and stars' free from fear and want; a place where the beautiful promise of happiness, liberty, and life may yet manifest true to finally include her family too."

One year ago, New Amsterdam Records released Inheritances, by Adam Tendler. After his father’s unexpected death, Tendler used his complete inheritance, an envelope full of cash received in a parking lot, to commission a broad spectrum of today’s most sought after composers—also his friends—to compose piano works exploring the theme of ‘inheritance’ itself. Woven into a single intimate program of “little masterpieces” (New York Times), each reflecting a “melancholy beauty beyond conventions” (Pioneer Press), this “wildly unexpected” (Star Tribune) program tells a universal story of lineage, loss, and place, and has moved audiences internationally. Garnering national media attention since its premiere, Inheritances has become a powerful meditation on confronting our past, and a catalyst for countless listeners to move forward.

Produced by Grammy-winning engineer Judith Sherman, this much-anticipated album features new works by an all-star lineup including Laurie Anderson, Devonté Hynes, Nico Muhly, inti figgis-vizueta, Pamela Z, Ted Hearne, Angélica Negrón, Christopher Cerrone, Marcos Balter, Missy Mazzoli, Darian Donovan Thomas, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Scott Wollschleger, Mary Prescott, Timo Andres, and John Glover. 

On May 22nd, composer and vocalist Nathalie Joachim will present SOUND ON, a “highly anticipated world premiere” with the New York Philharmonic. Joachim’s Ki moun ou ye was released by New Amsterdam Records and Nonesuch in 2024.