Performance #1
Pre-Show Reception: 6:00 - 7:00PM
Concert: 7:00PM - 8:00PM
Performance #2
Pre-Show Reception: 7:30 - 8:30PM
Concert: 8:30PM - 9:30PM
Last year, we expanded our subterranean empire to the magnificent Crypt under the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in a collaboration spanning three evenings of music-making that critics hailed as "revelatory," "emotional and spiritual," "exquisite," and "audacious."
This October 8-10 we'll return for a three-night run of a program entitled Relics & Martyrs, featuring the world premiere of a new cantata by composer and double bassist extraordinaire Doug Balliett, whose music has been hailed as "vivid, emotive, with contemporary twists" (The New York Times) and "weird in the best possible way" (I Care if You Listen).
Balliet's work explores the twisted history of relics and martyrs, and will be woven together with selections from Dietrich Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri and Caroline Shaw's to the hands, combining to create a centuries-spanning outpouring of love, longing, and hope that the future will somehow be more just then our past, and our present.
Performing the program will be an early-music supergroup, made up of 5 singers and 7 instrumentalists from two of NYC's most boundary-breaking musical collectives: vocal chamber ensemble The New Consort and period-instrument band Theotokos.
Each performance includes a pre-concert reception with wine, food, and Via Carota cocktails in the spectacular main space of the Cathedral, followed by a walk through the stone quarry before descending to the Crypt.
Join us for this singularly overwhelming musical expression of sacrifice - what we give, what we take, and what we leave behind.
Doug Balliett is a composer, instrumentalist and poet based in New York City. 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 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, where he also composes new music every week. He plays regularly with the American Modern Opera Company, Les Arts Florissants, Jupiter Ensemble, ACRONYM, Ruckus, Boston Early Music Festival, Alarm Will Sound, and other ensembles. Mr. Balliett has led Les Arts Florissants in his own work on several occasions, including Ovid Cantatas, filmed for Qwest TV with the Juilliard School, and a new St. Mark Passion performed and filmed in August, 2025. Upcoming and recent performances include his newest opera Rome is Falling! with AMOC in Lincoln Center, his Ovid Cantatas in Zurich, two new songs for Reggie Mobley’s upcoming album The Curious Bard, his St. Mark Passion in New York City, and Beast Fights with the Boston Symphony bass section at Tanglewood.
Winners of the American Prize in Chamber Music, THE NEW CONSORT is a vocal chamber ensemble dedicated to exploring the roles that musical ritual and community can play in 21st-century lives. We program historical works for voices, then recontextualize them for a modern audience; we commission and highlight significant new works that think deeply about vocal music’s legacy and future; and we knit rituals and stories out of our performances, marrying old and new wisdom about inspiring empathy, community, and awe. We bring the unique emotive power of vocal ensemble music out of its historical place in religious ceremony, using it instead to humanize the marginalized and illuminate thematic connections among creators in many genres of musical expression.
Founded by baritone & Artistic Director Brian Mummert, The New Consort has been presented by organizations including Trinity College, Cambridge; Tippet Rise Art Center; Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue; Williams College; Sacred Music at Columbia University; Princeton University Chapel; The Bach Store, an NYC pop-up concert hall; Pegasus Early Music and New York State Baroque; and at concert halls, churches, and schools throughout the Northeast United States. Recent and upcoming commissions include projects by Jonathan Woody, Rosśa Crean, Annie Nikunen, Simon Frisch, Hope Littwin, and Niccolo Seligmann. Members of The New Consort appear as soloists, choristers, and conductors with some of the world’s best-respected ensembles, but relish the opportunity to collaborate as chamber musicians.