WHO WE ARE.
WHAT WE DO.
MISSION STATEMENT
thingNY is a 501c3 not-for-profit collective of composer-performers who create and perform theatrically charged experimental music, champion the work of avant-garde and contemporary classical composers, and collaborate across disciplines, media and genres.
thingNY is a 501c3 not-for-profit collective of composer-performers who create and perform theatrically charged experimental music, champion the work of avant-garde and contemporary classical composers, and collaborate across disciplines, media and genres.
ABOUT US
thingNY is a collective of New York composer-performers who fuse electronic and acoustic chamber music with new opera, improvisation, theater, text, song, and installation. Founded in 2006, thingNY performs experimental sound works created collaboratively by the core ensemble - Paul Pinto, Erin Rogers, Jeffrey Young, Gelsey Bell, Dave Ruder, and Andrew Livingston - and by adventurous composers such as Jennifer Walshe, Robert Ashley, Rick Burkhardt, Pauline Oliveros, Miguel Frasconi, Vinko Globokar, John Cage, Julius Eastman, Jessie Marino, and Andrea La Rose.
The musicians of thingNY are a prolific bunch. They’ve collaboratively created four operas: their latest, This Takes Place Close By, explores the reactions of isolated individuals in the wake of a devastating storm, and was hailed as "blackly amusing, sonically rich" by NY Music Daily. It premiered September 2015 at The Knockdown Center, a 50,000 square-foot space in Maspeth, Queens, and toured to Philadelphia, Boston, New Haven, Edmonton and Calgary during its production. Their first opera, ADDDDDDDDD, premiered in 2009 and was released on CD in 2010 with a comic-book libretto, and has been called “an arresting hour-long gobstopper” by the New Yorker. In 2011, thingNY collaborated with Panoply Performance Laboratory to create Time: A Complete Explanation in Three Parts, accompanied by a 250-page hardcover book. Jeff Young and Paul Pinto, Patriots, Run for Public Office on a Platform of Swift and Righteous Immigration Reform, Lots of Jobs, and a Healthy Environment: an Opera by Paul Pinto and Jeffrey Young, a 30-minute, politically-charged, theatrical work, has toured across the country since 2011 and was released as an album with accompanying campaign buttons in 2018 on Gold Bolus Recordings.
thingNY has premiered many works of high energy chamber music by its ensemble members, including Paul Pinto's wildly verbose minis series and Erin Rogers' whimsical Trajectories, which were released together on Gold Bolus Recordings in 2016. In 2018 and 2019, the group went amplified to premiere the live version of Andrew Livingston’s Gold Bolus album News from the Oort Cloud in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, and then fully acoustic to premiere Dave Ruder’s understated You Must Read a Lot of Jung in Queens, DC, and Connecticut alongside Skylighght, a work collaboratively created and performed by Erin Rogers and Gelsey Bell. In 2017, thingNY presented and performed the premiere run of Paul Pinto’s Thomas Paine in Violence in association with HERE Arts Center.
thingNY has commissioned, premiered, and toured works by groundbreaking composers outside the group, including Passover, a new piece written in 2018 by Rick Burkhardt. In 2015, they joined indie superstar Helado Negro in the collaborative string-conducted project Brainfinger, presented by the Ecstatic Music Festival at Merkin Hall. From 2010-2012, thingNY premiered hundreds of works over the course of three marathon performances called SPAM, in which the ensemble sent out a mass call for scores by email and performed every submitted piece.
thingNY has produced some of their most interesting work in underutilized or radically reimagined spaces, including the 2020 live-streamed SubtracTTTTTTTTT, created and performed online at a time of social distancing. In 2014, with the teenage new music ensemble Face the Music, the ensemble created a spatialized sound performance on the walkway surrounding the Queens Museum's 9335 square foot Panorama of New York City. Their 2011 mobile sound installation In House featured live performers playing music written for in each of the rooms commonly found in a home and housed itself, among other places, in an abandoned Lower East Side apartment and an 18th century house museum. In 2017, to commemorate the ensemble’s 10th anniversary, the group created thingNY: 10 Years in the (Music) Making, an interactive visual and electronic installation at Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center where the group covered the walls with memorabilia from their first decade. And, in an industrious flurry, the group refitted an old taxi garage for a three-day festival of experimental opera in Long Island City in 2012.
thingNY is a driving force in the New York music community, working to bolster and support new music and experimental performance, curating the New Music Showdown (2013-2014) and the Immediacies Series (2012-2014), putting a swath of performers from NYC and beyond in conversation with one another and allowing them to perform anti-concert-hall or difficult-to-program works. thingNY has also performed important contemporary works such as Frederic Rzewski's Attica (1971), the New York premiere of Vinko Globokar's rarely staged opera Un Jour Comme Un Autre (1975), and played a large role in Varispeed’s acclaimed site-specific adaptation of Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives (2011).
thingNY has received multiple grants from the Aaron Copland Fund, Chamber Music America, Amphion Foundation, New Music USA, the New York Department of Cultural Affairs, Network of Ensemble Theaters, and the Queens Council on the Arts, and residencies at Incubator Arts Project, Standard Toykraft, Orange Theatre, and the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center. In 2013, the ensemble helped launch Spaceworks LIC, with an intimate performance for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer through the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City. thingNY is featured on Season 3 of the Made HERE documentary series, devoted to the lives of performing artists based in New York City.
thingNY has received support from the Aaron Copland Fund, Chamber Music America, Amphion, New Music USA, the New York Department of Cultural Affairs, Network of Ensemble Theaters, and the Queens Council on the Arts, and residencies at Incubator Arts Project, Standard Toykraft, Orange Theatre, and the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center. In 2013, the ensemble helped launch Spaceworks LIC, with an intimate performance for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer through the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City. thingNY is featured on Season 3 of the Made HERE documentary series, devoted to the lives of performing artists based in New York City.
thingNY is a collective of New York composer-performers who fuse electronic and acoustic chamber music with new opera, improvisation, theater, text, song, and installation. Founded in 2006, thingNY performs experimental sound works created collaboratively by the core ensemble - Paul Pinto, Erin Rogers, Jeffrey Young, Gelsey Bell, Dave Ruder, and Andrew Livingston - and by adventurous composers such as Jennifer Walshe, Robert Ashley, Rick Burkhardt, Pauline Oliveros, Miguel Frasconi, Vinko Globokar, John Cage, Julius Eastman, Jessie Marino, and Andrea La Rose.
The musicians of thingNY are a prolific bunch. They’ve collaboratively created four operas: their latest, This Takes Place Close By, explores the reactions of isolated individuals in the wake of a devastating storm, and was hailed as "blackly amusing, sonically rich" by NY Music Daily. It premiered September 2015 at The Knockdown Center, a 50,000 square-foot space in Maspeth, Queens, and toured to Philadelphia, Boston, New Haven, Edmonton and Calgary during its production. Their first opera, ADDDDDDDDD, premiered in 2009 and was released on CD in 2010 with a comic-book libretto, and has been called “an arresting hour-long gobstopper” by the New Yorker. In 2011, thingNY collaborated with Panoply Performance Laboratory to create Time: A Complete Explanation in Three Parts, accompanied by a 250-page hardcover book. Jeff Young and Paul Pinto, Patriots, Run for Public Office on a Platform of Swift and Righteous Immigration Reform, Lots of Jobs, and a Healthy Environment: an Opera by Paul Pinto and Jeffrey Young, a 30-minute, politically-charged, theatrical work, has toured across the country since 2011 and was released as an album with accompanying campaign buttons in 2018 on Gold Bolus Recordings.
thingNY has premiered many works of high energy chamber music by its ensemble members, including Paul Pinto's wildly verbose minis series and Erin Rogers' whimsical Trajectories, which were released together on Gold Bolus Recordings in 2016. In 2018 and 2019, the group went amplified to premiere the live version of Andrew Livingston’s Gold Bolus album News from the Oort Cloud in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, and then fully acoustic to premiere Dave Ruder’s understated You Must Read a Lot of Jung in Queens, DC, and Connecticut alongside Skylighght, a work collaboratively created and performed by Erin Rogers and Gelsey Bell. In 2017, thingNY presented and performed the premiere run of Paul Pinto’s Thomas Paine in Violence in association with HERE Arts Center.
thingNY has commissioned, premiered, and toured works by groundbreaking composers outside the group, including Passover, a new piece written in 2018 by Rick Burkhardt. In 2015, they joined indie superstar Helado Negro in the collaborative string-conducted project Brainfinger, presented by the Ecstatic Music Festival at Merkin Hall. From 2010-2012, thingNY premiered hundreds of works over the course of three marathon performances called SPAM, in which the ensemble sent out a mass call for scores by email and performed every submitted piece.
thingNY has produced some of their most interesting work in underutilized or radically reimagined spaces, including the 2020 live-streamed SubtracTTTTTTTTT, created and performed online at a time of social distancing. In 2014, with the teenage new music ensemble Face the Music, the ensemble created a spatialized sound performance on the walkway surrounding the Queens Museum's 9335 square foot Panorama of New York City. Their 2011 mobile sound installation In House featured live performers playing music written for in each of the rooms commonly found in a home and housed itself, among other places, in an abandoned Lower East Side apartment and an 18th century house museum. In 2017, to commemorate the ensemble’s 10th anniversary, the group created thingNY: 10 Years in the (Music) Making, an interactive visual and electronic installation at Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center where the group covered the walls with memorabilia from their first decade. And, in an industrious flurry, the group refitted an old taxi garage for a three-day festival of experimental opera in Long Island City in 2012.
thingNY is a driving force in the New York music community, working to bolster and support new music and experimental performance, curating the New Music Showdown (2013-2014) and the Immediacies Series (2012-2014), putting a swath of performers from NYC and beyond in conversation with one another and allowing them to perform anti-concert-hall or difficult-to-program works. thingNY has also performed important contemporary works such as Frederic Rzewski's Attica (1971), the New York premiere of Vinko Globokar's rarely staged opera Un Jour Comme Un Autre (1975), and played a large role in Varispeed’s acclaimed site-specific adaptation of Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives (2011).
thingNY has received multiple grants from the Aaron Copland Fund, Chamber Music America, Amphion Foundation, New Music USA, the New York Department of Cultural Affairs, Network of Ensemble Theaters, and the Queens Council on the Arts, and residencies at Incubator Arts Project, Standard Toykraft, Orange Theatre, and the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center. In 2013, the ensemble helped launch Spaceworks LIC, with an intimate performance for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer through the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City. thingNY is featured on Season 3 of the Made HERE documentary series, devoted to the lives of performing artists based in New York City.
thingNY has received support from the Aaron Copland Fund, Chamber Music America, Amphion, New Music USA, the New York Department of Cultural Affairs, Network of Ensemble Theaters, and the Queens Council on the Arts, and residencies at Incubator Arts Project, Standard Toykraft, Orange Theatre, and the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center. In 2013, the ensemble helped launch Spaceworks LIC, with an intimate performance for Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer through the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City. thingNY is featured on Season 3 of the Made HERE documentary series, devoted to the lives of performing artists based in New York City.
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Jeffrey Young is a composer, violinist, and electronic musician from Brooklyn, NY who specializes in experimental, rock, and classical music. Recent performance highlights include tours in Europe and the US as a solo performer and with The World/Inferno Friendship Society, US tours with trio Valerie Kuehne and the Wasps Nests and with composer/performer Paul Pinto, and three shows in Switzerland playing music he composed for Swiss-based theater ensemble stringsaTTached. He has played on national TV shows The Late Show with David Letterman and The Rachael Ray Show, and at the Lucerne Festival Academy, Bang on a Can, National Repertory Orchestra, and Aspen Festivals. [jeffrey-young.com]
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Dave Ruder is composer, clarinetist, guitarist, vocalist, etc based in Brooklyn. In addition to thingNY, he is a member of Varispeed and Thee Reps. Since 2013, he has been the driving force behind Gold Bolus Recordings, where you can find a number of his solo recordings and collaborations. In 2019, thingNY premiered Dave's composition You Must Read a Lot of Jung.[daveruder.com]
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Erin Rogers is a Canadian saxophonist and composer based in New York City. Her works have been performed by the Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, Anubis Quartet, Lost Dog Ensemble, IKTUS Percussion, Project Fusion, and Madrid’s Tribuna Sax-Ensemble. She has played with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Copland House, mise-en, and PRISM, and is a founding member of the New Thread Saxophone Quartet and Hypercube (formerly IKTUS Combo). In 2013, Erin was awarded a Jerome Fund Commission from the American Composers Forum for Mother Earth, a work for flute, sax quartet and electronics, that premiered at Carnegie Hall. Her work Trajectories was featured at the 2015 Ecstatic Music Festival. [erinmrogers.com]
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Paul Pinto is a composer, writer and performer. He makes noises sometimes. Sometimes with thingNY and Varispeed. Other times just in his living room. Often, he writes them on paper and makes other people make the noises for him. He's got a bunch of albums, including minis/Trajectories, and Jeff Young and Paul Pinto, Patriots. When he performs other people's noises, it sometimes involves singing and dancing on Broadway in The Great Comet of 1812, touring the manic 5-octave Eight Songs for a Mad King, or doing something fringy and challenging. In 2017, Paul premiered his opera Thomas Paine in Violence and in 2018, his solo dance piece 15 Photos. Now he's working on an opera about boxing. [pfpinto.com]
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Andrew Livingston is a bassist, cellist and composer/sound artist in Brooklyn. He studied with a bunch of awesome composers and musicians that are widely unknown and a couple that may be (known.) He has a masters in music theory and composition from CUNY. Andrew plays in rock bands and with a bunch of singer songwriters to win bread. He composes music and does sound design for theatre stuff sometimes and frequently collaborates with puppeteer, and performer Daniel Fay in their multimedia theatre group Unitards.[myspace.com/andrewhlivingston]
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Gelsey Bell is a singer, songwriter, and scholar. She is a core member of thingNY, Varispeed, and the Chutneys. She is the 2018 EtM Ridgewood Bushwick Composer-in-Residence. She received a 2017 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award and was an artist-in-residence at Roulette in 2015/16. She has worked with numerous other artists including Robert Ashley, Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler, Dave Malloy, Kate Soper, Erik Ruin, Rick Burkhardt, John King, Kimberly Bartosik, Yasuko Yokoshi, Miguel Frasconi, Cleek Schrey, and Gregory Whitehead. She has a PhD in Performance Studies from NYU. [gelseybell.com]
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Isabel Castellvi is a cellist, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter, and composer. As a versatile musician you can find her collaborating with musicians from around the globe. These collaborations span many genres, including her indie rock bands The Bell Cycle and Alula, her own solo projects, western classical and contemporary classical music, Classical Indian Music, West African and Middle Eastern music, to free improvisation, performance art, as well as composing music for dance and film. Isabel is grateful to share music all over the world through performances, recordings and teaching. Her musical travels have taken her throughout North America, Europe, Asia, Central and South America and the Middle East. [isabelcastellvi.com]
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alejandro t. acierto is an artist, musician, and curator whose work is largely informed by human relationships to technology. He has exhibited projects at the 2019 Havana Biennial in Matanzas, the Film Society of Lincoln Center (NYC), Issue Project Room (NYC), MCA Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Boundary Gallery (Chicago), and Roman Susan (Chicago). His performance works have also been presented as part of the Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival, the KANEKO (Omaha), Rapid Pulse Performance Art Festival (Chicago), Center for Performance Research (NYC), and Center for New Music and Technology at UCBerkeley. He is also co-author of CQDE: A Feminist Manifestx of Code-ing published by Sybil Press with KT Duffy. [alejandroacierto.com]
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