SHOWS
SPRING 2025
DIALOGUES SERIES// Cloud Burst
April 27, 2025 – 7:00PM
Join Unheard-of for our next Dialogues Concert on April 27th, 7PM at Opera America's Rehearsal Hall, 330 7th Ave 7th Floor. We perform music by Leah Reid, Seare Ahmad Farhat, Nicolas Chuaqui, Meg Okura, and Peter Kramer. In this Dialogues show, we pair two 30x30x30 collaborations from our partnership with Soli, Cloud Burst by Leah Reid and Seare Ahmad Farhat's Muzzahaimat. The two works explore shape and gestural memory with fracturing, cascading effect. We also premiere Turba by Peter Kramer and a new work for clarinet and electronics by Nicolas Chuaqui. Also featured is an honorable mention work from our 2nd Story Initaitive, Meg Okura's Phantasmagoria.
Summoning You: Featuring Leila Adu
Opening: Jessica Ackerley
Date: May 24th, 2025, 8PM Music, 7:30PM Canoe Launch
Location: Gowanus Dredgers Bunker, 2 19th St, Brooklyn, NY 11232
Electropop, avant-classical singer-songwriter Leila Adu joins Unheard-of to kick off the 2025 Cultural Ecologies season with new and recent arrangements of her music including her Freedom Suite and music from her latest album Moonstone & Tar Sands. Compared to Nina Simone and Joanna Newsome by WNYC, Adu has released five acclaimed albums, and has given visionary solo BBC and WQXR performances.
Hawai’i-based jazz guitarist, composer, and improvisor Jessica Ackerley opens the performance with a set of her original work. Ackerley will be performing selections from their most recent record, "All Of the Colours are Singing" and new music inspired by a summer 2024 residency in Svalbard, Norway. Their music has been featured and reviewed in Pitchfork, Wire Magazine, BBC Radio, Whole Note, MusicWorks Magazine, New York City Jazz Record, and BandCamp’s monthly “Best of” lists.
Travelogue: 2nd Street Sound Paddle
Date: Sunday, June 29th, 2025, 12PM-6PM Open Paddle (Pop-up performance at 6PM)
Location: Gowanus Dredgers Boathouse, 165 2nd St, Brooklyn, NY 11231
Unheard-of and music technologist Brian Ellis team up for the second iteration of our sound paddle, this time exploring the upper Gowanus from 2nd street to flushing tunnel. Hear sights, sounds, and stories from the Gowanus at your own pace via headphones or bluetooth speaker during any open paddle. As part of the opening day, members of the ensemble and the Dredgers will be able to guide you as you embark on your journey. There will be mini pop-ups throughout the day and a short live performance at 6PM in the boathouse with drinks to celebrate the opening!
System Architecture: Quiñones and Van Zandt Lane
Date: August 2nd, 2025, 8PM Music, 7:30PM Boat Launch
Location: Anable Basin (4521 5th St, Long Island City, NY 11101) near LIC Culture Lab, Queens
System Architecture features the premiere of Eyecandy, a multimedia song-cycle by Christian Quiñones for chamber ensemble and virtual singer (Vocaloid Synthesizer), exploring themes of virtual excess, internet fatigue, and digital humor, drawing from personal experiences with mental health and the online world. Christian Quiñones is a Puerto Rican composer who explores personal and vulnerable stories through the lens of cultural identity. From sampling to auto-tune, interactive multimedia, Christian is interested in interacting with existing music to create intertextual narratives.
We also feature a premiere by Peter Van Zandt Lane for ensemble, electronics, and video triangulating ecological changes and sea level rise. This event takes place at Anable Basin in collaboration with Long Island City Community Boathouse and the Dredgers.
Fire Ecologies Album Release Party
Date: September 27th, 2025, 6:30PM Music, 6PM Canoe Launch
Location: Gowanus Dredgers Bunker, 2 19th St, Brooklyn, NY 11232
Join Unheard-of Ensemble, the Dredgers, and Christopher Stark for our Fire Ecologies album release party. The ensemble performs the entire album live followed by an afterparty featuring food and drink from some of our favorite Brooklyn breweries and distilleries.
Fire Ecologies is an album length Chamber Music America commission from Rome Prize-winning composer Christopher Stark, exploring America's changing landscapes in the face of climate change. The work incorporates field recordings of the 2020 California wildfires and sounds from Chris's travel across Montana, Oregon, and California as well as parts of Colorado as well as explorations of nature from America’s heartland surrounding Missouri. The album will be released on New Focus Recordings and available in-person at the show.
FALL 2024/
WINTER 2025
DIALOGUES SERIES//Song and Memory
October 19th, 2024, 8:00PM
Join Unheard-of for the first Dialogues show of our Fall 2024 season on October 19th, 8:00 PM at Mise-en_Place, 341 Calyer Street, Brooklyn (2nd floor via stairs only). In this Dialogues show, we feature works that explore memory from mourning and sorrow, to kinetic joy and shared expression. Works on this concert contrast from laments and memoriams to the collective energy of dance and song. We also kick off our first 30X30X30 collaboration with San Antonio’s Soli Chamber Ensemble performing works by Alexandros Darna and Asuka Kakitani!
Ohio and Pennsylvania Tour
November 4th through 9th
11/4/24, 7PM, Denison University, Sharon Martin Hall, 100 West College Street, Granville, Ohio 43023
11/6–7/24, 7:30PM, Miami University, Center for Performing Arts, 420 S. Patterson Ave, Oxford, OH 45056
11/9/24, 8PM, University of Pittsburgh, Music on the Edge Series, 315 South Bellefield Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260
DIALOGUES SERIES//MEMORY FRAGMENTS
January 18th, 2025, 8:00PM
Join Unheard-of for the first Dialogues show of 2025 on January 18th, 8:00 PM at Tenri Cultural Institute, 43A West 13th Street, New York, NY. In this Dialogues show, we pair newly written movements of Vicki Nguyen's Ginger Flavored Bubblegum and David Crowell's Memories of the Imagined. Nguyen's work explores transcendence from grief by honoring poet, filmmaker, and artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha - who was murdered only a few days after the publication of her poetic autobiography, "Dictee." Crowell's Memories of the Imagined looks at memory through a multiplicity of approaches to phrasing and temporal expression, shaping the listener’s sense of passing time and its effect on the act of remembering.
University of Miami Residency
February 6th and 7th, 2025
Unheard-of visits University of Miami’s Frost School of Music to perform new premieres by the composition studio, supported by the Society of Composers chapter at UofM.
Association for the Promotion of New Music Collaboration
March 14th, 2025, 7:30PM
$20 / $15 students (Cash or Venmo at the door)
Join Unheard-of at Greenwich House Music School’s recital hall for a collaboration with the Association for the Promotion of New Music as we perform premieres and recent works from APNM’s call for scores to their membership. New and recent works by APNM members from the 2024-2025 Call-for-Scores. Music for clarinet and piano trio by APNM composers Carl Bettendorf, Peter Child, Stephen Dydo, Marjorie Merryman, Todd Tarantino, and Peter Susser.
Greenwich House Music School
46 Barrow Street
New York, NY 10014
REDNOTE New Music Festival
March 25 – 27, 2025
Unheard-of performs as part of the REDNOTE New Music Festival. Now in its eighteenth season, the RED NOTE New Music Festival at Illinois State University is a week-long event which features outstanding performances of contemporary concert music. Unheard-of will workshop new premieres with festival participants and present instrumental workshops.