The first of two events this spring with the Metrop­o­lis Ensemble happens this coming Monday. I’ve been working to organize these concerts with the Ensemble’s director/founder/conductor Andrew Cyr for probably the past two years; we’ve been in touch since mid-2007, before any of these pieces were written. As such, I feel I have a large stake in the success of these events (I mean æsthetic success, rather than finan­cial); they are repre­sen­ta­tive of my current thinking about Clas­si­cal Music Program­ming. Each concert is struc­tured around pairing one of my pieces with a “core reper­toire” piece to which it relates: on Monday, I Found it by the Sea with Brahms’s Op. 25 piano quartet (which my piece quotes). I’ll be playing piano on both pieces; the Brahms is a piece I’ve liter­ally been hoping to play since I was about 11, and it somehow hasn’t happened until now, so I’m very excited. 

But the thing that makes the Metrop­o­lis Ensemble’s program­ming differ­ent from most other “Clas­si­cal Music” orga­ni­za­tions is that it is composer-centric, which, by neces­sity, means living composers. The industry standard is performer/­work-centric: the planning begins with Anne-Sophie playing the Brahms concerto, and then the rest of the 1½ hours are filled in with music that may or may not have any bearing on Brahms. That type of program­ming putters along without offend­ing anyone, but I think we can all agree that there’s more than enough of it. I think a well-designed program is like a well-curated home; on the surface, stuff; may not look right together (Mozart and Brian Eno?) but the combined effect really tells you some­thing about the resident.

The concert is free, and will fill up fast; reserve your tickets here.

UPDATE: It’s sold out!