For 17 years now – or as long as this website has been around – the NYC-based chamber group yMusic have brought a sort-of indie sensibility to new music, equally comfortable in classical venues playing music by today’s leading composers, and concert stages backing the likes of John Legend, Paul Simon and Bon Iver. Their show last Wednesday at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall fell right into this pattern, with a program that showcased their versatility and virtuosity – not to mention their long history, with a who’s who of fellow composers and collaborators scattered throughout the audience. will end up on Saturday Night Live, or with a Met or NY Phil commission.
yMusic’s idiosyncratic makeup – Alex Sopp, flutes; CJ Camerieri, trumpet; Mark Dover, clarinets; Rob Moose, violin; Nadia Sirota, viola; and Gabriel Cabezas, cello – has yielded a steady diet of commissions from today’s leading composers that has both extended the repertoire and provided yMusic with a raison d’être. (For this concert, Sopp, who is recovering from cancer surgery, was replaced by Allison Loggins-Hull, without no noticeable difference.) In 2023, yMusic took things a step further, releasing a self-titled album of music they wrote themselves; the following year, they would go on to perform their own original score for Kyle Abraham’s dance piece Dear Lord, Make Me Beautiful.
Longtime NYC composer and impresario Judd Greenstein – who now makes his home in north-central Massachusetts – started writing Together (2022) during the COVID shutdown, with a flexible first movement (“Together Not Together”) that was originally designed to compensate for Zoom‘s annoying time lags. From there, the music embraces elements of minimalism but also ecstatic crescendos, anchored by long phrases in the trumpet and strings while the flute dances above.
Personally, I wasn’t familiar with R&B/Soul singer Emily King, but she’s been collaborating with yMusic since at least 2019. With Cabezas tapping on his cello and Camerieri playing with a mute, King blended Joni Mitchell’s phrasing with Alicia Keys’ flow, with maybe a bit of Victoria Williams thrown in. The songs she performed (“Radio”; “Distance”; “Look at Me Now”) were drawn from her own past relationships and the day-to-day struggles of living in New York. Midway through her set, Sopp made a surprise, emotional appearance onstage to sing harmony (Sopp has been branching out of late into vocals, releasing her debut solo album, The Hem & The Haw, last year.)
After intermission, the program concluded with the NY Premiere of Gabriella Smith’s paean to the ocean, Aquatic Ecology, featuring Smith’s own field recordings of undersea life. Smith, who’s made a name for herself writing music that evokes the natural world, was introduced to yMusic by Cabezas, her Curtis roommate and collaborator on her most recent album, Lost Coast. Aquatic Ecology is a sprawling, immersive work full of broad passages that move from darkness to light. For me, it recalled the music of her fellow Bay Area composer John Adams – or better still, his namesake John Luther Adams, whose own watery work, Become Ocean won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize. With all of the performances Smith’s been getting around the country, I can’t imagine it will be long before we see her name mentioned alongside those dual Adams’.
As I made my way up the escalator, it occurred to me that this evening with yMusic was a reminder of how tight-knit this community remains after nearly two decades. And how fortunate I am to have had a had a front seat for most of it.