Now Ensemble Releases Dreamfall’s “City Boy”

NOW ENSEMBLE SHARES “CITY BOY” FROM UPCOMING ALBUM DREAMFALL

PREMIERED VIA TINY MIX TAPES

ALBUM RELEASE SHOW PRESENTED BY Q2 MUSIC

AT THE GREENE SPACE AT WQXR ON JUNE 15, 2015

DREAMFALL DUE MAY 26, 2015 VIA NEW AMSTERDAM

New Amsterdam Records is proud to share “City Boy,” the Judd Greenstein-composed track from New York City new music mainstays NOW Ensemble‘s upcoming full-length Dreamfall. The track premiered via Tiny Mix Tapes, who called it “one of Dreamfall‘s more lucid pieces: a wordless ramble of a child, still free of worry and judgement, free and blind, stumbling through a market of colors and shoes and great clutter.” Dreamfall will see a release on May 26, 2015.

Sprawling in scope and ambition, the 76-minute album features seven composers – Scott Smallwood, Mark Dancigers, John Supko, Nathan Williamson, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Andrea Mazzariello and Judd Greenstein – and is by far most expansive and ambitious record for the group to date. The ensemble — comprised of Mark Dancigers (guitar), Michael Mizrahi (piano), Alex Sopp (flute) and Logan Coale (double bass) — is currently in their 10th year as a group, but although it’s cause for celebration, it’s hardly cause to slow down. To ring in Dreamfall‘s release, the group will take to the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at WQXR on June 15, 2015 for an event hosted by Q2 Music’s Helga Davis. In addition to a performance by the ensemble, the event will feature interviews with many of Dreamfall‘s composers. 

The group has many more projects scheduled down the line, including a collaboration on an opera with composer Judd Greenstein, a collaboration with GRAMMY-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth at the Skaneateles Festival in Skaneateles, NY on August 22, a collaboration with the Los Angeles Opera on Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek‘s Song From the Uproar on October 8-11 and more. The full list of their performances can be found below, with more to be announced soon.

Following the release of composer Missy Mazzoli‘s opera Song from the Uproar in 2012 and the critically-acclaimed collection Awake in 2011, Dreamfall stakes out a striking new landscape for the group. Ranging from ferocious to meditative to grooving and beautiful, the album is similar to the life of the ensemble itself over the past few years: pulsing with an urgent message, a desire to open up, be heard, and to share the sounds of unmediated musical worlds.

In the liner notes for the album, NOW Ensemble composer and guitarist Mark Dancigers explains that “dreamfall” is an outlook on the world.  He writes: “It is a state of immense freedom… The sounds on this record reflect this freedom, this sense of something a little out of our hands, and, beyond all else, the practice of making music that is NOW Ensemble.”

For the past 10 years, NOW Ensemble has worked tirelessly to craft a tightly-honed aesthetic. Dreamfall is the sound of the group letting go of the reins just a little and allowing a more free exchange between the conscious and subconscious.

NOW Ensemble is a dynamic group of performers and composers dedicated to making new chamber music for the 21st century. With a unique instrumentation of flute, clarinet, electric guitar, double bass, and piano, the ensemble brings a fresh sound and a new perspective to the classical tradition, infused with the musical influences that reflect the diverse backgrounds of its members. Their 2014 – 2015 season celebrates 10 years of bringing some of the most exciting composers of their generation to national and international recognition. This past fall and spring saw the group travel to the Apples and Olives Festival in Zurich, Switzerland, Town Hall Seattle, Da Camera Houston, the Lincoln Center Atrium, and the Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concert series. Upcoming projects include premieres of new works by composer Judd Greenstein, Dawn of MIDI‘s Qasim Naqvi, vibrant and innovative Princeton composition fellow Gabriella Smith, UT Austin professor Yevgeniy Sharlat, and Rome Prize winner Sean Friar.