Upcoming Events
RETURN/REVIVE
RETURN/REVIVE pairs two major works of grief and hope - one ancient, and one brand new. Tudor composer Robert White’s Lamentations a5, which gorgeously, viscerally express Jeremiah's sorrow at the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, are the first piece of Renaissance polyphony I fell in love with as an undergrad. Acclaimed composer and ensemble member Jonathan Woody’s new Lamentation, commissioned with the support of Chamber Music America's Classical Commissioning Grant, explores updated experiences of loss and otherness, but also celebrates the ability of communities to mold adversity into hope and purpose. Of course, it wouldn't be a show by The New Consort without a few extra musical tricks up our sleeve... keep your ears open for music by David Lang, Billie Eilish, and Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Tickets $25-30, $10 students; for more information, please visit https://marketstreetmusicde.org/concerts/festival-concert--new-consort-return/revive
RETURN/REVIVE
RETURN/REVIVE pairs two major works of grief and hope - one ancient, and one brand new. Tudor composer Robert White’s Lamentations a5, which gorgeously, viscerally express Jeremiah's sorrow at the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE, are the first piece of Renaissance polyphony I fell in love with as an undergrad. Acclaimed composer and ensemble member Jonathan Woody’s new Lamentation, commissioned with the support of Chamber Music America's Classical Commissioning Grant, explores updated experiences of loss and otherness, but also celebrates the ability of communities to mold adversity into hope and purpose. Of course, it wouldn't be a show by The New Consort without a few extra musical tricks up our sleeve... keep your ears open for music by David Lang, Billie Eilish, and Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Tickets $5-10; for more information, please visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-new-consort-tickets-815744221927
Begotten, Not Made
Begotten, Not Made explores what the words and music of the Christian Mass have to say to the 21st century, and how future generations might respond to those ideas. The New Consort has paired movements from William Byrd’s landmark Masses (honoring the 400th anniversary of his passing) with settings of texts from other faith traditions and from scientists & philosophers, including works by Shireen Abu Khader, Salamone Rossi, David Shapiro, Judith Weir, and Gregory Brown. At the heart of this program is a world premiere by Hope Littwin, a current PhD student in composition at Princeton: Stations of the Credo, a staged work exploring a core belief held by each singer of the ensemble.
Begotten, Not Made
Begotten, Not Made explores what the words and music of the Christian Mass have to say to the 21st century, and how future generations might respond to those ideas. The New Consort has paired movements from William Byrd’s landmark Masses (honoring the 400th anniversary of his passing) with settings of texts from other faith traditions and from scientists & philosophers, including works by Shireen Abu Khader, Salamone Rossi, David Shapiro, Judith Weir, and Gregory Brown. At the heart of this program is a world premiere by Hope Littwin, a current PhD student in composition at Princeton: Stations of the Credo, a staged work exploring a core belief held by each singer of the ensemble.
Begotten, Not Made
Begotten, Not Made explores what the words and music of the Christian Mass have to say to the 21st century, and how future generations might respond to those ideas. The New Consort has paired movements from William Byrd’s landmark Masses (honoring the 400th anniversary of his passing) with settings of texts from other faith traditions and from scientists & philosophers, including works by Shireen Abu Khader, Salamone Rossi, David Shapiro, Judith Weir, and Gregory Brown. At the heart of this program is a world premiere by Hope Littwin, a current PhD student in composition at Princeton: Stations of the Credo, a staged work exploring a core belief held by each singer of the ensemble.
SUNSET
Drawing inspiration from the ancient rite of Compline, SUNSET is a series of musical experiences to mark the end of the day in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The New Consort has transformed these prayers for night-time protection into a meditative experience through which people of all faiths, or none at all, can find inspiration and peace. In addition, we'll be welcoming a special guest - soprano, singer-songwriter, and sound healer elly kace! Join us to mark the close of the day, and to find peace and awe in the presence of nature’s, and each other’s, beauty - and follow us on Instagram or Facebook for morning-of park location details...
SUNSET
Drawing inspiration from the ancient rite of Compline, SUNSET is a series of musical experiences to mark the end of the day in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The New Consort has transformed these prayers for night-time protection into a meditative experience through which people of all faiths, or none at all, can find inspiration and peace. In addition, we'll be welcoming a special guest - soprano, singer-songwriter, and sound healer elly kace! Join us to mark the close of the day, and to find peace and awe in the presence of nature’s, and each other’s, beauty - and follow us on Instagram or Facebook for morning-of park location details...
SUNSET
Drawing inspiration from the ancient rite of Compline, SUNSET is a series of musical experiences to mark the end of the day in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The New Consort has transformed these prayers for night-time protection into a meditative experience through which people of all faiths, or none at all, can find inspiration and peace. In addition, we'll be welcoming a special guest - soprano, singer-songwriter, and sound healer elly kace! Join us to mark the close of the day, and to find peace and awe in the presence of nature’s, and each other’s, beauty - and follow us on Instagram or Facebook for morning-of park location details...
SUNSET
Drawing inspiration from the ancient rite of Compline, SUNSET is a series of musical experiences to mark the end of the day in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The New Consort has transformed these prayers for night-time protection into a meditative experience through which people of all faiths, or none at all, can find inspiration and peace. In addition, we'll be welcoming a special guest - soprano, singer-songwriter, and sound healer elly kace! Join us to mark the close of the day, and to find peace and awe in the presence of nature’s, and each other’s, beauty - and follow us on Instagram or Facebook for morning-of park location details...
To Ornament Things Divine: Sacred and devotional music by William Byrd
The New Consort will collaborate New Haven-based Elm City Consort to mark the 400th anniversary of William Byrd’s passing. Built around Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices (ca 1592), the performance will include additional works in English and Latin from all of Byrd’s major collections, as well as pieces for viol consort. Admission is by donation; $25 suggested, but all are welcome regardless of their ability to donate.
To Ornament Things Divine: Sacred and devotional music by William Byrd
The New Consort will collaborate New Haven-based Elm City Consort to mark the 400th anniversary of William Byrd’s passing. Built around Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices (ca 1592), the performance will include additional works in English and Latin from all of Byrd’s major collections, as well as pieces for viol consort. Admission is by donation; $25 suggested, but all are welcome regardless of their ability to donate.
Compline with The New Consort
Join The New Consort as we sing the Office of Compline throughout the duration of Lent at at Saint Paul’s Carroll Street in Brooklyn. Compline, originally the last of many daily prayers among Christian holy orders, has found new life in the modern world: this half-hour ritual of sung chants and polyphony provides an opportunity to reflect, experience awe, and reconnect with the divine in each of us as the day draws to a close. In memory of the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd, each Compline service will include one of his masterpiece Jerusalem Motets. We look forward to sharing this weekly ritual with many of you, and are grateful to Saint Paul’s Carroll Street for their collaboration on this project.
Compline with The New Consort
Join The New Consort as we sing the Office of Compline throughout the duration of Lent at at Saint Paul’s Carroll Street in Brooklyn. Compline, originally the last of many daily prayers among Christian holy orders, has found new life in the modern world: this half-hour ritual of sung chants and polyphony provides an opportunity to reflect, experience awe, and reconnect with the divine in each of us as the day draws to a close. In memory of the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd, each Compline service will include one of his masterpiece Jerusalem Motets. We look forward to sharing this weekly ritual with many of you, and are grateful to Saint Paul’s Carroll Street for their collaboration on this project.
Compline with The New Consort
Join The New Consort as we sing the Office of Compline throughout the duration of Lent at at Saint Paul’s Carroll Street in Brooklyn. Compline, originally the last of many daily prayers among Christian holy orders, has found new life in the modern world: this half-hour ritual of sung chants and polyphony provides an opportunity to reflect, experience awe, and reconnect with the divine in each of us as the day draws to a close. In memory of the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd, each Compline service will include one of his masterpiece Jerusalem Motets. We look forward to sharing this weekly ritual with many of you, and are grateful to Saint Paul’s Carroll Street for their collaboration on this project.
Compline with The New Consort
Join The New Consort as we sing the Office of Compline throughout the duration of Lent at at Saint Paul’s Carroll Street in Brooklyn. Compline, originally the last of many daily prayers among Christian holy orders, has found new life in the modern world: this half-hour ritual of sung chants and polyphony provides an opportunity to reflect, experience awe, and reconnect with the divine in each of us as the day draws to a close. In memory of the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd, each Compline service will include one of his masterpiece Jerusalem Motets. We look forward to sharing this weekly ritual with many of you, and are grateful to Saint Paul’s Carroll Street for their collaboration on this project.
Compline with The New Consort
Join The New Consort as we sing the Office of Compline throughout the duration of Lent at at Saint Paul’s Carroll Street in Brooklyn. Compline, originally the last of many daily prayers among Christian holy orders, has found new life in the modern world: this half-hour ritual of sung chants and polyphony provides an opportunity to reflect, experience awe, and reconnect with the divine in each of us as the day draws to a close. In memory of the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd, each Compline service will include one of his masterpiece Jerusalem Motets. We look forward to sharing this weekly ritual with many of you, and are grateful to Saint Paul’s Carroll Street for their collaboration on this project.
Compline with The New Consort
Join The New Consort as we sing the Office of Compline throughout the duration of Lent at at Saint Paul’s Carroll Street in Brooklyn. Compline, originally the last of many daily prayers among Christian holy orders, has found new life in the modern world: this half-hour ritual of sung chants and polyphony provides an opportunity to reflect, experience awe, and reconnect with the divine in each of us as the day draws to a close. In memory of the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd, each Compline service will include one of his masterpiece Jerusalem Motets. We look forward to sharing this weekly ritual with many of you, and are grateful to Saint Paul’s Carroll Street for their collaboration on this project.
Sounding Memory: Music as an Act of Remembrance in the Renaissance
Anne of Brittany is remembered both as a unifier of modern France through her marriages to both Charles VIII and Louis XII, and as one of the foremost musical patrons of the Renaissance. Her courts’ support of composers including Johannes Ockeghem and Josquin des Prez not only drove musical innovations; it also built a community of accomplished musicians, many of whose works were designed as objects of remembrance & legacy preservation, honoring Anne or their fellow composers.
In Sounding Memory, we celebrate the works created by this community, and are pleased to expand upon them with “Fais doncq un chant/Requiem,” written by Simon Frisch for The New Consort to remember the 500th anniversary of the death of Josquin des Prez. Join us for this free concert at Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue on Sunday, February 5, at 5:15 PM to experience these stunning memorials-in-sound come to life.
PAST PROJECTS
PAST PROJECTS
MARCH & APRIL 2023
Join The New Consort as we sing the Office of Compline throughout the duration of Lent at at Saint Paul’s Carroll Street in Brooklyn. Compline, originally the last of many daily prayers among Christian holy orders, has found new life in the modern world: this half-hour ritual of sung chants and polyphony provides an opportunity to reflect, experience awe, and reconnect with the divine in each of us as the day draws to a close. In memory of the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd, each Compline service will include one of his masterpiece Jerusalem Motets. We look forward to sharing this weekly ritual with many of you, and are grateful to Saint Paul’s Carroll Street for their collaboration on this project.
FEBRUARY 2023
Anne of Brittany is remembered both as a unifier of modern France through her marriages to both Charles VIII and Louis XII, and as one of the foremost musical patrons of the Renaissance. Her courts’ support of composers including Johannes Ockeghem and Josquin des Prez not only drove musical innovations; it also built a community of accomplished musicians, many of whose works were designed as objects of remembrance & legacy preservation, honoring Anne or their fellow composers.
In Sounding Memory, we celebrate the works created by this community, and are pleased to expand upon them with “Fais doncq un chant/Requiem,” written by Simon Frisch for The New Consort to remember the 500th anniversary of the death of Josquin des Prez. Join us for this free concert at Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue to experience these stunning memorials-in-sound come to life.
DECEMBER 2021
Ring in the season with A Close Harmony Christmas, an enchanting program featuring both gems of the holiday canon and fantastic new Christmas classics from the classical, pop, and jazz worlds. Music includes works by Thomas Tallis, John Rutter, *NSYNC's vocal arranger Robin Wiley, and many more. This program is presented at Brooklyn’s Coffey Street Studios as several shorter musical sets interspersed with opportunities to chat with our performers and explore the unique artists' studio space, and at St. Luke’s Danbury and St. Ann’s Old Lyme, Connecticut, in evening-length concert format followed by a celebratory reception
OCTOBER 2021
Few works match the heartfelt expressions of love and grief of the déplorations written by the great Franco-Flemish Renaissance composers upon the deaths of their teachers and friends. For the 500th anniversary of Josquin des Prez's own death, The New Consort explores these remarkable works by Josquin, Mouton, Gombert, Compère, and more, including a newly commissioned déploration from Simon Frisch on texts collected from Josquin's epitaph and other composers' tributes.
AUGUST 2021
The Songs Will Remain, conceived for Tippet Rise’s 2021 Virtual Festival, is an exploration of love and pain: the way our attempts to connect can leave us feeling disconnected, and the ways that we sometimes use expressions of love or support to obscure our self-interested actions. Featuring works by Monteverdi, Gesualdo, Ted Hearne, and Shireen abu Khader.
MAY 2021
Why is it that women in art are so often the ones punished for love? O Stars, Conspiring Against Me is a meditation on women in myth, and how those stories continue to shape the portrayal of women in art to this day. The program is built around the North American digital premiere of The Turn, a piece by UK-based composer Ben Rowarth designed to be interspersed with, and thus recontextualize, Claudio Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna, and is framed by works by some of Monteverdi’s female contemporaries asking, well, the same kinds of questions we are. Co-presented by NYS Baroque and Pegasus Early Music.
FEBRUARY 2021
ARIANNA/JEREMIAH: Voices in Lamentation juxtaposes two masterpieces: Robert White’s Lamentations of Jeremiah a5 and Claudio Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna. Conceived of in a moment of worldwide grief and frustration, the concert presents these deeply evocative, unexpectedly shifting works to offer an opportunity for contemplation and catharsis.
DECEMBER 2020
In the midst of the pandemic, The New Consort is delighted to present the first installment of The Arch Sessions: That Fair Flower, featuring some of our favorite music for Christmas! Please enjoy these videos, filmed under Glade & Greywacke Arches in New York City's Central Park. In this abnormally-quiet December for performers and music lovers alike, we hope that The Arch Sessions can help get you in the holiday spirit.
APRIL 2019
Subtler Than Light: Music of the Dow Partbooks is a concert about seeking equilibrium: warding off despair for our imperfect world with hope, and striving for balance between sombre contemplation and joy. Preserved within calligrapher Robert Dow’s 1588 partbooks, one finds a snapshot of exemplary Tudor-era composers struggling to make sense of the world through the lens of their Christian faith; from Robert White’s Lamentations to William Byrd’s Laetentur coeli, these Elizabethan masters endeavor to capture the scope of human emotion. Two world premieres by Rossa Crean and Ethan McGrath reinforce the idea that we turn to forces greater than ourselves in this search for equilibrium… though not always the ones we might expect.
JANUARY 2019
O Stars, Conspiring Against Me examines the evolving depiction of women in music. This workshop of a new program at Spectrum NYC revolves around The Turn, a piece by UK-based composer Ben Rowarth designed to be interspersed with, and thus recontextualizing, Claudio Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna. Stories of other legendary female figures comprise the remainder of the program, primarily set by women composers from the past six centuries.
DECEMBER 2018
The New Consort celebrates the music of Johann Sebastian Bach at The Bach Store, an all-Bach pop-up, on Sunday, Dec 2, at 6:15 PM. We are thrilled to be one of the featured guest artists on this installation and concert series exploring the work of this master composer. The program consists of three of his best-loved motets: Komm, Jesu, komm; Jesu, meine Freude; and Singet dem Herrn, all performed by an octet of young professional singers from around NYC.
MARCH 2017
David Lang's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, the little match girl passion, performed by The New Consort. Lang's work powerfully confronts secular issues of homelessness and disenfranchisement within a sacred framework drawn from the Passions of Bach. These are issues that persist within the Cambridge community; in an attempt to effect change, we are donating all proceeds from this concert to Jimmy's, Cambridge's only emergency homeless shelter.
APRIL 2016
In commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, The New Consort presents MUCH ADO ABOUT MUSIC: 400 Years of Shakespeare in Song. This musical celebration of the Bard’s enduring legacy includes music written by English composers of Shakespeare’s time, settings of Shakespeare’s texts by a variety of more recent composers, and readings from some of his greatest plays and sonnets. We are particularly excited to present the world premiere of “When He Shall Die,” composed specifically for The New Consort for this occasion by Lyme resident and Wesleyan emeritus faculty member Sarah Meneely-Kyder. The concert celebrates the life and work of this great artist, whose characters and stories continue to wield influence across our culture to this day.
OCTOBER 2015
The New Consort WINS the 2015 American Prize in Chamber Music!
For more information about The American Prize, please visit their website.
MARCH 2015
CARRY ME HOME: Music of Struggle, Mourning, and Redemption is a musical exploration of the harshness of winter juxtaposed with our constant hope for a brighter future. Through the music of composers ranging from J. S. Bach and Francis Poulenc to Steven Stucky and Ysaye Barnwell, the program serves as a cathartic preparation for the arrival of spring.