Let's play!

Next May 28^th will see the launch of the first ever NY Phil Biennial, to take place. From that Wednesday until Saturday, June 7^th, music will take on New York City with 22 concerts taking place in many different scenarios in the city, with a roster of many well-known musicians, including Alan Gilbert and Alisa Weilerstein amongst others.

The truly amazing feature of this Biennial is that all the music that will be played is new. This spectacle will include contemporary composers from all around the world, bringing new sounds to a bunch of different corners of the city. Going against the common belief that the audience “isn’t ready” to listen to contemporary music because of its complicated musical language and sounds, the New York Philharmonic has opted to create a whole festival around new music, with a fresh take on the classical world.

This initiative coming from musicians means a lot when it comes to appreciating and not underestimating audiences. People are ready to listen to the music that is being produced nowadays and this festival reinforces that idea by only presenting fresh music. It also shows the beauty of arts working together to create amazing pieces that will float around and envelop New York City’s venues. From The Raven, an opera based on Poe’s brilliant poem, to CONTACT! At the Biennial, the US premiere of a musical piece inspired by outdoors sculptures in Salzburg, this event will be filled with references of our current environment and world, and that is precisely why people are ready to listen to it.

But as if it wasn’t enough, the NY Phil Biennial will also include events featuring young students from the city, creating another element of inclusion in their concerts. With the participation of the Julliard’s AXIOM Ensemble in the opera Gloria – a pig’s tale; the concert performed by the Kaufman Music Center's Special Music School High School, the only ensemble 18 and under dedicated only to the performance of music by living composers; to the Very Young Composers of the Philharmonic, a concert performed by Philharmonic musicians and teaching artists with music composed by students of the Very Young Composers program, and Jovenes Compositores de Venezuela program.

This event will truly be a musical revolution. It will have the great task of showing people how much they are ready for new music, and show those musicians clinging to the past how ready audiences are for new music. As Benjamin Zander says, “everybody loves classical music, they just don’t know it yet”. And what better way to find out that you love this music than to hear the interpretation of your current world through sounds, the sounds of today.  So I invite you to join the NY Philharmonic in their “musical playground of the here and now. Let’s go beyond. Let’s explore, let’s revel. Let’s play!”