for the Metropolis Trilogy
Roscoe Mitchell // composer
DACAMERA // co-commissioner
Metropolis Ensemble + Andrew Cyr // co-commissioner and producer
Ruckus // co-commissioner and dedicatee
Emi Ferguson // co-commissioner and dedicatee
Immanuel Wilkins Quartet // co-commissioner and dedicatee
Doug Balliett, bass and viola da gamba
Mikael Darmanie, harpsichord and synth
Emi Ferguson, baroque and modern flutes
Paul Holmes Morton, theorbo/banjo/guitar
Thomas Morgan, bass
Kweku Sumbry, drums
Toby Tittle, sound design
Micah Thomas, piano
Immanuel Wilkins, saxophone
Clay Zeller-Townson, baroque bassoon
Roscoe Mitchell // artwork (title: Lady Moon)
Special thanks to Wendy Mitchell, John McCowen, Kyle Moten, and Elliot Figg.
METROPOLIS TRILOGY, PROGRAM NOTES
Tonight’s concert explores the transformative potential of cross-genre collaboration, bringing together jazz musicians and early music specialists to push the boundaries of composition, improvisation, and time. By setting aside the conventional distinctions between genres and historical periods, the works presented illuminate the dynamic relationship between composer, performer, and listener, celebrating the enduring power of musical creativity and collaboration.
This event has been years in the making, and those of us involved can hardly believe it’s finally come to fruition! Creative visionary Roscoe Mitchell has composed a new work that unites artists across genres, a collaboration made possible by DACAMERA and the Metropolis Ensemble, led by Sarah Rothenberg and Andrew Cyr. Like many great stories, this one brings together musicians from disparate worlds whose paths have converged to create something extraordinary.
In 2019 while together on tour, Metropolis Ensemble founder and director Andrew Cyr and saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins envisioned bringing together Jazz and Baroque performers to explore the intersections of these art forms. The idea was simple: celebrate the dialogue between genres that had, until then, rarely met on the same stage.
Andrew contacted me and inspired by the possibilities, I reached out to Clay Zeller-Townson, founder of the Baroque continuo ensemble Ruckus, who immediately joined the conversations. A team was formed, but the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic halted live performances and stalled our momentum. Still, the group—Andrew, Immanuel, Clay, and I—remained connected, brainstorming ideas via Zoom. The question remained: What would we play, and when?
During this time, I began reading composer and historian George Lewis’s A Power Stronger Than Itself, a detailed chronicle of the Chicago-based AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians). In its pages Roscoe Mitchell is a central figure and I was eager to listen to his music, so vividly described in the book. When a Google search for his music turned up a photo of him holding a Baroque flute, I was intrigued. As it turns out, Roscoe had been incorporating Baroque instruments, particularly Baroque flutes and recorders, into his work for decades. I reached out to express my admiration, our mutual passion for woodwinds old and new, and to share my interest in collaborating. To my delight, Roscoe responded with equal enthusiasm. and set out to write the piece you are hearing tonight.
Creating a piece that could unite the instruments, aesthetics, and performance practices of such diverse ensembles—while also being adaptable for each group or soloist independently—was no small feat. But Roscoe was uniquely suited to the challenge and the resulting work surpassed all our expectations.
The Metropolis Trilogy is structured in three movements:
I. Lady Moon opens with fully notated sections, featuring improvised flute cadenzas that seamlessly transition into a group improvisation with flute and Ruckus, all inspired by an eponymous art-work Roscoe painted on canvas.
II. O’Cayz Corral highlights the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet in a high-energy and different texture to Lady Moon, framed by meticulously notated sections and two improvised interludes.
III. Metropolis at 440 Oakwood Drive reunites both ensembles in a striking trio of saxophone, Baroque bassoon, and modern flute, supported by the combined rhythm sections. This movement introduces a surprising element — an “easter egg” card game between the performers, designed by Roscoe. Each player uses a set of unique cards to explore the unmeasured melodic and harmonic material of the piece, "shuffling" it in real time and shaping the composition while adhering to Roscoe’s motivic language. The trilogy concludes with a piano solo, punctuated by interjections from the ensemble, culminating in a serene tutti chord.
We cannot imagine a better place to premiere this work than here at DACAMERA in Houston - an organisation that has been a pioneer in the celebration of chamber music and jazz music as one. Tonight marks the World Premiere of this work, a 40-minute fusion of Jazz and Baroque instruments, which takes up the entire second half of the program. Each movement will be preceded by a prélude from percussionist Kweku Sumbry - a nod to Roscoe’s own percussion work and love for Baroque tradition—a love that stretches back to the founding days of the AACM where Roscoe and collaborators including Muhal Richard Abrams would work on the music of Handel after breakfast.
The first half of tonight’s program features Baroque works by Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, Telemann, and Handel, newly arranged for this evening alongside pieces from the AACM, highlighting the core themes of our collaboration with Roscoe—improvisation and the dialogue between performers and composers across time and tradition.
Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665–1729), a pioneering composer and virtuoso harpsichordist, was celebrated at the court of Louis XIV from the age of six. Her Unmeasured Preludes (originally for harpsichord), are notated without rhythm or bar lines, inviting the performer to engage as both interpreter and co-creator—much like Roscoe’s use of improvisation and open form. Similarly, Georg Philipp Telemann’s Fantasia in A Major, (originally written for solo flute), has been reimagined for the ensemble, interspersed with Telemann’s original flourishes. These pieces evoke open, improvisatory scenes, inspired by the collaborative and improvisatory spirits which Telemann and Jacquet de La Guerre would surely have joined with a smile.
Despite being separated by centuries, these Baroque works converse in fascinating ways with Roscoe’s Metropolis Trilogy and George’s Artificial Life. Both Roscoe and George invite performers into the creative process through open improvisation, giving them agency within the context of their distinct musical languages. Their long-standing collaboration, along with the influence of George’s writing on Roscoe’s work, made Artificial Life an essential part of this story.
Written for any combination of performers (8 or more), Artificial Life offers text-based instructions to shape the music collectively in real time. George writes, "The piece is open to performers from any musical tradition, including those who do not regularly include improvisation in their practice. The instructions serve as a toolbox for producing a range of sounds and forms that exceed the composer’s imagination, and for that reason, there is no canonically correct way for the piece to sound."
Instead of fixed rhythms or pitches, performers are given word-based instructions that encourage them to generate and shape the music collectively. The result is a dynamic, ever-changing soundscape that reflects the unique chemistry of the ensemble, and in this case, ensembles, and the context of each performance. Tonight, we will draw as source material the many musical ideas and motifs that will echo in this hall, from Mitchell to de La Guerre, and beyond. Though titled Artificial Life, the music is anything but artificial—it is a living, breathing creation, shaped by the performers in the moment.
Emi Ferguson, December, 2024
BIOS
Emi Ferguson, Ruckus, and the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet come together under the banner of the Metropolis Ensemble to bring to life Roscoe Mitchell’s grand Metropolis Trilogy. Individually, all nine performers are trailblazers in the jazz and baroque performance worlds, and together they join to create a supergroup of musical fusion that deftly weaves their expertise in the experimental jazz and baroque worlds through the music of Roscoe Mitchell and George Lewis.
Roscoe Mitchell
Roscoe Mitchell is considered one of the key figures in avant-garde jazz, integrating influences from everywhere—world music, funk, rock, classical—to create music that is at once beautiful and complex. He has been involved with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), a Chicago-based nonprofit organization founded in the mid1960s to advance new creative music. Mitchell has performed on more than 85 recordings and written in excess of 250 compositions in the jazz and classical realms. He continues to pass down his musical knowledge of composition and improvisation, both in educational and performance settings.
Mitchell first played saxophone and clarinet as a teenager in Chicago, Illinois, and while stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army, he played in a military band. While overseas, he met and played with saxophonists Albert Ayler and Rubin Cooper in military parades and jam sessions. Returning to Chicago in 1961, he performed with a group of Wilson Junior College students who included bassist Malachi Favors and saxophonists Joseph Jarman, Henry Threadgill, and Anthony Braxton. Mitchell also began studying with pianist/composer Muhal Richard Abrams and joined Abrams' new Experimental Band, a group that explored extended forms of composition and improvisation.
In 1965, Mitchell became an inaugural member of the AACM, and his sextet became the first AACM group to record. This group eventually turned into the Art Ensemble of Chicago, including Favors and Jarman, and Lester Bowie on trumpet. Without a drummer, all the band members would share timekeeping duties, using makeshift percussion instruments ranging from found objects to toys. Even after they recruited percussionist Don Moye, they all continued to contribute to the beat. The Art Ensemble of Chicago took Europe by storm in the late 1960s with its fiery performances, unusual instrumentation, and African-inspired clothing and face-paint.
After the group’s return to the U.S. in the early 1970s, Mitchell continued working with the Art Ensemble and members of the AACM, but also created other groups for his restless musical output. He established the Creative Arts Collective in 1974, and as an outgrowth of that, the Sound Ensemble. Mitchell also began releasing more albums as a leader and experimenting with finding new ways to make music, such as learning the tradition of circular breathing and working with computers in improvisation. In the 1990s, he began collaborating with such classical composers as Pauline Oliveros and Thomas Buckner. In his educational work, he has proposed studying composition and improvisation in tandem, to think like a composer when improvising, what Mitchell has called “composition in real time.” Mitchell has taught at institutions such as the University of Illinois, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, California Institute of the Arts, and for the past decade served as the Darius Milhaud Chair of Composition at Mills College in Oakland, California.
George Lewis
George Lewis is an American composer, musicologist, and trombonist. He is the Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music and Area Chair in Composition at Columbia University. In 2020-21 he was a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study),
and he currently serves as Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin, and an Honorary Member of the American Musicological Society. Lewis’s other honors include the Doris Duke Artist Award (2019), a MacArthur Fellowship (2002), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015). A member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewis's work is presented by ensembles worldwide, published by Edition Peters. A Yamaha Artist, Lewis is widely regarded as a pioneer in the creation of computer programs that improvise in concert with human musicians. Lewis’s central areas of scholarship include the history and criticism of experimental music, computer music, interactive media, and improvisation, particularly as these areas become entangled with the dynamics of race, gender, and decolonization. His widely acclaimed book, A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press, 2008) received the American Book Award and the American Musicological Society’s Music in American Culture Award. Lewis is the co-editor (with Harald Kisiedu) of the bilingual edited volume Composing While Black: Afrodiasporic New Music Today/Afrodiasporische Neue Musik Heute (2023), as well as (with Benjamin Piekut) the twovolume Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies (2016). Lewis's many publications on technology include “Too Many Notes: Computers, Complexity and Culture in Voyager” (Leonardo Music Journal, 2000) and “Why Do We Want Our Computers To Improvise?” (Oxford Handbook of Algorithmic Music, 2018). Lewis holds honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Oberlin College, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, New England Conservatory, New College of Florida, and Birmingham City University, among others.
Andrew Cyr and Metropolis Ensemble
Metropolis Ensemble is a Grammy-nominated nonprofit organization dedicated to commissioning and producing ambitious creative projects in contemporary music. With a particular focus on expanding opportunities for emerging professional musical creators and performers through collaboration, Metropolis partners with world-class musical artists and institutions to create, commission, and produce site-specific performances, new works, recordings, and digital experiences.
Founded by Grammy-nominated conductor Andrew Cyr in 2006, NYC-based Metropolis Ensemble gathers independent expert musicians for each project, inspiring audiences through the creation of new instrumentations and dynamic collaborations. Metropolis Ensemble has garnered national and international recognition for its many studio recordings. In 2010, Metropolis Ensemble, conductor Andrew Cyr, and mandolinist Avi Avital received Grammy Award Nominations for their debut album featuring the music of Avner Dorman (Naxos Records). In 2013, Vivian Fung was awarded Canada’s Juno Award for Best Classical Composition for a work Metropolis Ensemble commissioned, produced and recorded for Naxos Records. And in 2014, producer David Frost received a Classical Producer of the Year Grammy Award for work that included Metropolis Ensemble’s album of music by composer
Timo Andres, recorded at Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall (Nonesuch). In 2023, Metropolis Ensemble albums Telekinesis (Tyondai Braxton/Nonesuch) was nominated for Europe’s prestigious prize Opus Klassik in two categories. In the fall of 2024, Metropolis Ensemble’s album on Nonesuch Records featuring the music of Timo Andres was awarded a Grammy Nomination for Best Engineered Album.
Metropolis Ensemble has been presented by Hollywood Bowl, The Met Museum, BAM’s Next Wave Festival, The Tonight Show, Lincoln Center’s Out-of-Doors and American Songbook, Creative Time, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Celebrate Brooklyn(!), The New Victory Theatre, Sounds from A Safe Harbour (Cork, IR), Cité de la Musique (Paris, FR), The Melbourne Festival (Hamer Hall, AU), Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, The Kennedy Center, House of Yes, Mass MoCA, Eau Claire Hiver (Eaux Claire, WI), Public Records, Verizon Center (Philadelphia, PA), The Opera Group and Opera North in association with Royal Opera House 2 and Watford Palace Theatre; Cincinnati Symphony, The Bowery, The Wordless Music Series, Symphony Space, Brown Arts Institute/Brown University, (le) Poisson Rouge, Ecstatic Music, National Sawdust, The Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.), The Greene Space/WNYC, among many others.
This season, Metropolis debuts with Cosm LA and Cosm Dallas, Prototype Festival in New York, DACAMERA in Houston, and will return to Brooklyn Botanic Garden on the summer solstice to present a World Premiere arrangement of Music for 18 Musicians. Learn more at https://metropolisensemble.org
Emi Ferguson
A 2023 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Emi Ferguson can be heard live in concerts and festivals with groups including the Handel and Haydn Society, AMOC*, Ruckus, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Manhattan Chamber Players, and as the music director of Camerata Pacifica Baroque. Her recordings Amour Cruel and Fly the Coop: Bach Sonatas and Preludes, celebrate her fascination with reinvigorating music and instruments of the past for the present and have been called “blindingly impressive ... a fizzing, daring display of personality and imagination” by The New York Times. She’s joined by Ruckus for her newest album, By George! the music of György Ligeti and G.F. Telemann, released later this year. Emi has spoken and performed at TEDx events and has been featured on the Discovery Channel, Amazon Prime, WQXR, and Vox talking about how music relates to our world today. As part of WQXR’s Artist Propulsion Lab, she created the series “This Composer is SICK!” with Max Fine, exploring the impact of Syphilis on composers Franz Schubert, Bedřich Smetana, and Scott Joplin, is a new host of WQXR’s Young Artists Showcase. Her book, “Iconic Composers”, co-written with Nicholas Csicsko with artwork by David Lee Csicsko, was released in 2023. Born in Japan and raised in London and Boston, she now resides in New York.
Immanuel Wilkins Quartet
Immanuel Wilkins
Immanuel Wilkins is a saxophonist, composer, arranger, and bandleader from the greater Philadelphia area. Moving to New York in 2015, Wilkins earned his bachelor’s degree in music at the Juilliard School, studying with the saxophonists Bruce Williams and the late Joe Temperley while simultaneously establishing himself as an indemand sideman working and/or recording with artists like Jason Moran, Kenny Barron, Bill Frisell, Joel Ross, Aaron Parks, Gerald Clayton, Wynton Marsalis, and Solange Knowles, to name just a few. It was also during this same period that he formed his quartet featuring his long-time bandmates: Micah Thomas (piano), Daryl Johns (bass), and Kweku Sumbry (drums). Being a bandleader and having a working group for over four years has allowed Wilkins to grow both as a composer and arranger—and has led to him receiving a number of commissions including, most recently, from the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and the Jazz Gallery Artist Residency Commission program. He was also the Kimmel Cultural Campus Center artist-in-residence for 2020. He has collaborated with visual artists Cauleen Smith, Kennedy Yanko, Rog Walker, David Dempewolf, and Leslie Hewitt. In addition to teaching at NYU and the New School, Wilkins has taught and given master classes and clinics at schools/venues like Oberlin College, Yale University, and the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. Ultimately, Wilkins’s mission is to create a sound that has a profound spiritual and emotional impact that will allow him to become a great leader in the long lineage of jazz musicians. Through studying the human pathos of the music and the culture of jazz, Wilkins aspires to bring people together through the commonality of love and belief in this music. He has two albums out on Blue Note Records—Omega and his most recent release, The 7th Hand.
Grounded in the traditions of the Djembe Orchestra, Kweku Sumbry is a multipercussionist from Washington, DC. With the djembe, drumset, and a multitude of West African Percussion instruments, Kweku is bringing forth a new sound to the music world. Music has allowed Kweku to travel to Ghana, New Zealand, Brazil And France to name a few countries. At the age of 25, Kweku has already graced the stage with Ambrose Akinmusire, Yosvany Terry, Cyrus Chestnut, Meshell Ndegeocello, Shabaka Hutchings and Reggie Workman. A true global citizen, Kweku continues to travel the world, building upon his knowledge of world musical traditions and cultures. Kweku currently is a member of the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet, who recently released his debut album Omega, and sophomore album The 7th Hand on critically acclaimed label; Blue Note. A true lover of Art, Dance, Music, and all things pertaining to Black culture, Kweku has set out to change the lens in which West African drumming is viewed by the rest of the world.
Kweku Sumbry
Micah Thomas
Micah Thomas was born in 1997 in Columbus, Ohio. In 2015, Micah Thomas was awarded the Jerome L. Greene Fellowship from the Juilliard School and received his Bachelor of Music (B.M.) degree in 2019, followed by his Master of Music (M.M.) degree in 2020. His first album with his trio, “Tide”, was released in June 2020 and received positive reviews from The New Yorker, The New York Times, JazzTimes, and Financial Times, among others. In September 2022, Micah Thomas released his first solo album “Piano Solo” and won the Grand Prix Award from Charles Cros Academy of France. He is now performing locally and internationally, both as a leader of his own trio and a steady member of the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet, alongside sideman appearances with Ambrose Akinmusire, Lage Lund, Billy Drummond, Zoh Amba, Giveton Gelin, Stacy Dillard, Joel Ross, Nicole Glover, Melissa Aldana, Etienne Charles, Harish Raghavan and others.
Thomas Morgan
Thomas Morgan is a double bass player with a unique approach to the instrument and an exceptional musical understanding. He has played on a hundred some recordings and toured all over the world as a member of bands led by Bill Frisell, Jakob Bro, Craig Taborn, Masabumi Kikuchi, Paul Motian, Dan Weiss, Jim Black, John Abercrombie, Dave Binney, Steve Coleman, Henry Threadgill, and Tomasz Stanko, among many others. It is Thomas Morgan’s extraordinary way of being in the moment in music and putting his own signature on it that has made him one of the most in demand jazz bassists on the international scene.
Ruckus
Ruckus is a shapeshifting, collaborative baroque ensemble with a visceral and playful approach to early music. Described as “the world’s only period-instrument rock band” (San Francisco Classical Voice), Ruckus’ core is a continuo group, the baroque equivalent of a jazz rhythm section: guitars, keyboards, cello, bassoon and bass. The NYC-based ensemble aims to fuse the early-music movement’s questing, creative spirit with the grit, groove and jangle of American roots music, creating a unique sound of “rough-edged intensity” (New Yorker) that’s “achingly delicate one moment, incisive and punchy the next” (New York Times). The group’s members are among the most creative and virtuosic performers in North American early music. The Boston Musical Intelligencer describes the group as taking continuo playing to “not simply a new level, but a revelatory new dimension of dynamism altogether… an eruption of pure, pulsing hoedown joy.” Ruckus is the “house band” for Hudson Hall’s baroque opera productions, directed by R.B. Schlather. The New York Times reviewed the 2023 production of Handel’s Rodelinda, praising Ruckus’ unconducted playing as “mercurial, almost improvisatory spirit that responded to the drama in real time.” The ensemble made its Ojai Festival debut in 2022, performing a wide range of repertoire from the 17th century through to many new works. Recent highlights include debuts at the Shriver Concert Hall Series in Baltimore, Boston’s Celebrity Series, the Caramoor Festival, and NYC’s Town Hall.
Clay Zeller-Townson
Clay Zeller-Townson is the founder of Ruckus. He is a bassoonist and educator based between Vermont and New York City. He plays with the leading period instrument ensembles in North America including: Tafelmusik, The Handel and Haydn Society, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Les Delices, Boston Baroque and Trinity Baroque Orchestra. He has given coachings on performance practice and masterclasses at New England Conservatory, UCLA, The Colburn School, The University of Missouri and The Eastman School of Music.
Clay was born in Nova Scotia, raised in eastern North Carolina, and found his way to the baroque bassoon by way of the tenor saxophone. He holds a Bachelor’s degree and Performer’s Certificate from The Eastman School of Music, a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School and the Advanced Certificate in Music Education from CUNY-Brooklyn College. He is a visiting instructor of Baroque Bassoon at New England Conservatory.
Doug Balliett
Doug Balliett is a composer, instrumentalist and poet based in New York City. The New York Times has described his compositions as "brainily bubble gum and lovably shaggy" (Rome is Falling), his poetry as “brilliant and witty” (Clytie and the Sun), and his bass playing as “elegant” (Shawn Jaeger’s In Old Virginny). The Los Angeles Times recently wrote "Bassist Doug Balliett, who teaches a course on the Beatles at the Juilliard School and writes cantatas for Sunday church services, as well as wacky pop operas, is in a class of his own." Doug has also been professor of baroque bass and violone at The Juilliard School since 2017, and leads the Theotokos ensemble every Sunday at St. Mary's church on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He plays regularly with AMOC, Les Arts Florissants, Jupiter Ensemble, ACRONYM, Ruckus, BEMF, Alarm Will Sound, and other ensembles. In August 2021 five of his Ovid Cantatas were filmed for Qwest TV with William Christie, Lea Desandre, and Nick Scott. For three years he and his twin brother hosted a weekly show dedicated to living composers on WQXR's new music channel Q2. Upcoming performances of his work include Beast Fights at Tanglewood with the Boston Symphony bass section, and the annual New Year's Eve performance of his opera Gawain and the Green Knight.
Paul Morton
Over the past decade, Paul Holmes Morton has become a plucked instrument specialist practicing disciplines from the European Renaissance to modern Americana. Perpetually inspired by music as a vehicle to transport oneself across time and culture, Paul Holmes aims to study the practice of traditional forms while allowing such various esthetics to coalesce in his own expressions of interpretations. He can be found in a variety of venues from cathedrals and opera houses to living
rooms and bars, anywhere that allows performance to lend harmony to the present noise. He is a proud member and active recording artist of various ensembles, including Ruckus, The Chivalrous Crickets, Makaris, and The Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado. He is based in Pennsylvania.
Mikael Darmanie
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Metropolis Ensemble Project Page
Emi Ferguson Project Page
Metropolis Ensemble Website
Emi Ferguson Website
Immanuel Wilkins Website
Ruckus Website
Excerpts from Emi’s book Iconic Composers (scored audio versions created with WQXR available upon request)
CREDITS:
ICONIC COMPOSERS
Text by Nicholas Csicsko & Emi Ferguson
Artwork by David Lee Csicsko
Published by Trope, 2023
