Metropolis is a nonprofit producing organization for new music and the artists who make it. Our work is to build the conditions that allow ambitious musical ideas to move from imagination to reality.
Founded in New York City in 2006 by conductor, producer, and organist Andrew Cyr, Metropolis develops, records, and launches ambitious new music projects in collaboration with composers, performers, and presenters. Known for championing a new generation of composers and performers, the organization’s work spans orchestral premieres, studio recordings, interdisciplinary collaborations, and site-specific events in New York and beyond.
Through its recordings, performances, and collaborations, Metropolis has helped introduce many of today’s most compelling new voices in contemporary music.
Impact at a Glance
450+ original commissioned works developed since 2006
3 Best-of-Year citations in 2024–25 alone: New York Times, NPR, Gramophone
JUNO winner: Classical Composition of the Year — Vivian Fung's Violin Concerto, commissioned for violinist Kristin Lee; performed across the US and Canada
30K+ reached via Biophony (our free annual street festival with NYC DOT) and Summer Solstice at Brooklyn Botanic Garden
What the Press Says
How We Work
Artist-first commissioning — Multi-year collaborations built around the work — not a fixed ensemble. Each project is developed from the ground up: tailored instrumentation, studio recordings, and full production support that puts our artists on the map.
Immersive stages — From sunrise performances at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, to city plazas via our street festival Biophony, to dome experiences in Los Angeles, we find the stage the work demands and build toward it.
Recorded by experts — We record with world-class artists and engineers with major and independent labels (Nonesuch, New Amsterdam, Def Jam, , Western Vinyl, Merge, Naxos). Awards and international press follow the work and accelerate the careers behind it.
Talent Pipeline
We identify and invest in future leaders early — before the field catches up. Alumni have gone on to win national and international prizes and hold concertmaster positions at NY Phil, Minnesota Orchestra, OSM, and Seattle Symphony. ensembles and redefine repertoire. The pipeline is long and the results speak for themselves.
Artist Acclaim
Artists who've worked with Metropolis have gone on to win Pulitzer Prizes (Caroline Shaw), Rome Prizes (Christopher Cerrone, Erin Gee, Paula Matthusen), Grammys (William Brittelle), Guggenheims (Vivian Fung), and major orchestra commissions (Timo Andres, Sarah Kirkland Snider, David Bruce). We don't take credit for their talent — we take pride in recognizing it early.
Selected Productions
A selection of projects spanning recordings, premieres, interdisciplinary collaborations, and civic-scale performances, created in collaboration with composers, performers, filmmakers, and artists across disciplines.
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In a Grove (Prototype)
New York Times “highlight of the festival... best of 2025, so far."
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The Blind Banister (Dolby Atmos)
Gramophone Editor’s Choice; New York Times/NPR year-end lists.
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Biophony (citywide)
55 commissions; 650+ musicians; 125+ free shows; 30k+ attendees.
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Summer Solstice (Brooklyn Botanic Garden)
Sunrise meditations and sunset re-imaginings drawing thousands.
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Liquidverse (COSM)
Immersive full-dome at COSM: Ricardo Romaneiro’s LIQUIDVERSE, Metropolis records World Premiere audio-visual symphony for 87-foot 12K LED cinematic space in Los Angeles and Dallas.
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Caroline Rose (Brooklyn Steel)
Caroline Rose x Metropolis at Brooklyn Steel: orchestral reimaginings of her acclaimed albums.
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Bangsokol (BAM)
A Requiem for Cambodia—Metropolis with Cambodian Living Arts, Him Sophy, and Oscar-nominated Rithy Panh; mourning, testimony, communal healing; projects toured BAM, Boston, Paris, Montreal, Melbourne, Taiwan, Phnom Penh
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Electronium: The Future Was Then (BAM)
Metropolis Ensemble joins Questlove of The Roots at BAM’s Next Wave
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Drifting in Daylight (Central Park)
Metropolis brass aboard Ragnar Kjartansson’s S.S. Hangover circles Harlem Meer, performing Kjartan Sveinsson’s score for Creative Time at Central Park.
How We Work
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Multi-genre fluency — built for collaboration
From orchestra to indie, jazz, electronic, and performance art — we work across genres because the work demands it. Questlove & The Roots, Caroline Rose, Emily Wells, Ricardo Romaneiro, Wye Oak, Ragnar Kjartansson, Tan Dun, Roscoe Mitchell, Deerhoof, Immanuel Wilkins, Erik Hall. Releases on Nonesuch, Merge, Naxos, Western Vinyl. Stages from city streets to the Hollywood Bowl, from downtown studios to The Met Museum. The Tonight Show. The work travels.
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Invited artists — a curated roster
We identify distinctive voices — from leading conservatories and the wider professional community — and invite them into a real development pathway: workshops, concerts, premieres, residencies, and studio recordings. Every stage is fully resourced so composers and performers can focus entirely on the work. Projects land on global stages. Careers advance.
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Long-game collaborations — Ricardo Romaneiro
Nearly 20 years together—from intimate Upper East Side townhouse salons and early labs, through Biophony: SoundGarden at Brooklyn Botanic Garden (all seven conservatories; sensor-driven soundbath with live ensemble)—to large-scale immersion with LIQUIDVERSE at COSM’s 87-foot domes in LA and Dallas. Same composer, growing canvases; our production infrastructure makes the leaps possible. One example among many.
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One Rivington — artists lead, we clear the path
Our Lower East Side studio-lab hosted 100+ shows (2017–2020) and is back this season. We hand the keys to composers and entrepreneurial musicians while covering production, engineering, artist support—so ideas move fast from concept to stage.
Result: In a Grove was incubated at Rivington before its acclaimed Prototype premiere. Dozens of composer and artist residencies. Pay-what-you-want eliminates economic barriers.
Artistic Director — Andrew Cyr
Andrew Cyr is the founder and artistic director of Metropolis, and one of contemporary music's most distinctive creative forces — conductor, organist, and producer.
Over twenty years he has built Metropolis into a full production organization whose artists have gone on to win Pulitzers, Grammys, Rome Prizes, and Guggenheims. A Grammy-nominated conductor, his productions span releases on Nonesuch, Western Vinyl, New Amsterdam, Merge, Def Jam, and Naxos, with collaborators ranging from Roscoe Mitchell to Timo Andres, Erik Hall to Tan Dun, Tyondai Braxton to Vivian Fung, Emily Wells to Questlove.
“Precise, rhythmically incisive and fluid…” — Esa-Pekka Salonen
“A prominent influence…led with tasteful panache.” — The Washington Post
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Metropolis is a nonprofit producing organization for new music and the artists who make it.
Our work is to build the conditions that allow ambitious musical ideas to move from imagination to reality.
Founded in New York City in 2006 by conductor, producer, and organist Andrew Cyr, Metropolis develops, records, and launches ambitious new music projects in collaboration with composers, performers, and presenters. Known for championing a new generation of composers and performers, the organization’s work spans orchestral premieres, studio recordings, interdisciplinary collaborations, and site-specific events in New York and beyond.
Over the past two decades Metropolis has commissioned, developed, and produced projects that would not otherwise exist: a decade-long opera incubated at our Lower East Side studio before its acclaimed Prototype Festival premiere; Sarah Kirkland Snider’s orchestral album Forward Into Light on Nonesuch; Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato reimagined for fifty musicians alongside Erik Hall and Sandbox Percussion on Western Vinyl; Roscoe Mitchell’s Metropolis Trilogy, merging baroque, classical, and jazz traditions; the international production of Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia by Him Sophy and filmmaker Rithy Panh, which toured six countries across three continents; and Ricardo Romaneiro’s Liquidverse, staged inside an 87-foot dome at COSM. Metropolis productions have earned three GRAMMY recognitions and appeared on stages ranging from the Hollywood Bowl and Lincoln Center to the Kennedy Center and NBC’s Tonight Show.
Metropolis does not operate with a fixed instrumentation or a house sound. Each project begins with a simple question: what have you not yet been able to make? From there we assemble the collaborators, resources, and production framework needed to bring that work fully into the world.
We believe some of the most vital music being created today often emerges outside the traditional institutions built to present it — work whose scale, timelines, and interdisciplinary nature fall outside the structures those institutions were designed to support. Our role is to build the conditions that allow this work to exist: the relationships, the time, the space, and the resources that sustained artistic creation requires.
Metropolis’s long-term collaboration with pianist and composer Timo Andres — spanning more than two decades and including multiple commissions, two albums on Nonesuch, and a GRAMMY-nominated recording — reflects the kind of sustained artistic partnership at the center of our work.
Metropolis’s public programs also include large-scale civic and site-specific events. The organization has maintained a five-year collaboration with Brooklyn Botanic Garden, presenting a range of garden-wide projects including the past three editions of Solstice, a pair of sunrise and sunset performances that together form a seasonal musical ritual gathering thousands of listeners each year. Alongside Metropolis’s annual Biophony street festival, these programs bring communities together to experience new music at a civic scale, reaching tens of thousands of New Yorkers.
Through its recordings, performances, and artistic partnerships, Metropolis has helped introduce many of today’s most compelling voices in contemporary music.
Based in New York City, Metropolis operates from Rivington on the Lower East Side — a creative laboratory and public-facing venue where artists develop new work and audiences encounter it in its earliest and most adventurous forms. More than one hundred projects have been incubated and presented there in close collaboration with the artists who make them.
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Andrew Cyr, Founder/Artistic Director
Jenna Mulberry-Eng, Business and Events Manager
Katherine Fortunato, Digital Engagement and Production Associate
Henry Wang, Artist Support
Horacio Fernández, Production Assistant
Phong Tran, Production Assistant
Armistead Booker, Digital Media and Community Engagement Advisor
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(last updated November 21, 2025)
Eric Brewster (Chair)
Jennifer Omabegho (Vice-Chair)
Matthew Strassler (Secretary)
Paul Kovach (Treasurer)
Stephanie Amarnick
Andrew Cyr (Founder/Artistic Director)
Jeff Guida*
Mikhail Iliev
Candice Madey*
Edward Sien
Henry Wang (Artistic Advisor)
Susan Weiler
June Wu (Chair Emerita)
Edward Jones (President Emeritus)
*On Leave
Past Board Members
Mali Gaw
Eduardo Loja
Vladimir Nicenko
Arienne Orozco
Glenn Schoenfeld
Brandon Ziegler
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