Andrew Cyr
Founder and artistic director of Metropolis Ensemble, GRAMMY-nominated conductor and producer Andrew Cyr is a leading figure in the rapidly evolving landscape of contemporary orchestral music. Since establishing Metropolis Ensemble in 2006, Cyr has developed the organization into one of New York City’s most active incubators of emerging composers and performers, commissioning more than 450 compositions and presenting hundreds of premieres.
Working collaboratively with composers and performers, Cyr has led world-premiere performances and recordings at venues ranging from BAM, the Hollywood Bowl, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to Place des Arts in Montreal and the Cité de la Musique in Paris. Many of these premieres have since entered the repertory of orchestras and ensembles internationally.
Through innovative programming, sustained mentorship of early-career artists, and ambitious interdisciplinary collaborations, Cyr has championed a new generation of composers while cultivating audiences for contemporary orchestral music. Under his leadership, Metropolis Ensemble has become a nationally recognized model for artist-driven innovation.
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Metropolis Ensemble’s recordings have earned wide recognition. Cyr received a GRAMMY nomination for Best Solo Instrumental Performance (2010) for Avner Dorman’s Mandolin Concerto, featuring Avi Avital under his direction. The ensemble’s recordings have also contributed to GRAMMY recognition for collaborators, including producer David Frost’s GRAMMY Award for Producer of the Year, Classical (2014) for Timo Andres’s Home Stretch, as well as a 2025 GRAMMY nomination for Best Engineered Album, Classical for Andres’s The Blind Banister.
The ensemble’s discography continues to receive major critical attention. Christopher Cerrone’s opera In a Grove—co-presented with the Prototype Festival—was named by The New York Times among the Best Classical Music of 2025, praising Metropolis Ensemble’s “shimmering performance.” The Blind Banister appeared on Best of the Year lists from The New York Times, NPR Music, and Gramophone, while the recording of In a Grove was named one of The New York Times’ Best Classical Recordings of 2023.
Recent and forthcoming releases continue the ensemble’s presence on record. The orchestral album Forward Into Light by composer Sarah Kirkland Snider, performed by Metropolis Ensemble, was released in 2026. A new recording of Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato, led by Cyr with composer-performer Erik Hall and Sandbox Percussion, is forthcoming on Western Vinyl.
Cyr’s conducting has drawn praise from leading figures in the field. Esa-Pekka Salonen has described his work as “precise, rhythmically incisive and fluid…making complex new pieces sound natural and organic,” while The Washington Post has called him “a prominent influence in the world of newly emerging music,” noting that he “led the players with tasteful panache.”
Under Cyr’s direction, Metropolis Ensemble has appeared at venues and festivals including BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House (in collaboration with Questlove and The Roots), Radio City Music Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, and the Wordless Music Series, where Cyr conducted a remix of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring before an audience of 10,000 in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, broadcast live on NPR. The ensemble has appeared three times at BAM’s Next Wave Festival, including the internationally acclaimed Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia, which toured to Paris, Melbourne, Cambodia, Taiwan, Boston, and Montreal.
Cyr has cultivated numerous interdisciplinary collaborations. Recent projects include the 2025 world premiere of jazz innovator Roscoe Mitchell’s Metropolis Trilogy at Houston’s DACAMERA, featuring Emi Ferguson, the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet, and Ruckus. His long-term partnerships with composers often unfold over many years; Christopher Cerrone’s opera In a Grove, for example, developed through a decade of workshops, residencies, and recordings before its premiere.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Cyr launched Biophony in partnership with NYC DOT, transforming public space into stages for live music across the city. The initiative has since evolved into the annual Biophony Solstice, a sunrise-to-sunset celebration presented across New York City plazas and parks that has quickly developed into a new civic cultural ritual. Over the past three seasons the project has commissioned more than 55 compositions, employed more than 650 New York musicians, and reached over 30,000 audience members through more than 125 free performances.
Cyr’s recordings with Metropolis Ensemble span labels including Nonesuch, New Amsterdam, Naxos, Merge, and Western Vinyl. His debut album with the ensemble earned a GRAMMY nomination in 2010 for Avner Dorman’s Mandolin Concerto, featuring Avi Avital. The album Dreamscapes, featuring the music of composer Vivian Fung, received Canada’s JUNO Award in 2013 for Best Classical Composition.
Throughout his career Cyr has been an early advocate for many composers who have since gained international prominence, including Timothy Andres, David Bruce, Vivian Fung, Anna Clyne, Du Yun, Avner Dorman, Caroline Shaw, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Tyondai Braxton, Matthew Evan Taylor, and others.
His collaborators have included artists across disciplines including Tan Dun, Questlove and The Roots, filmmaker Rithy Panh, Emily Wells, San Fermin, Deerhoof, Wye Oak, Avi Avital, Immanuel Wilkins, Roscoe Mitchell, producer Silas Brown, producer David Frost, and Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson.
A native of Fort Kent, Maine, Cyr studied ethnomusicology and French at Bates College, trumpet at the Conservatoire National de Région in Nantes, and choral conducting and organ performance at Westminster Choir College. A pipe organist by training, he has served as organist at Saint Thomas More in New York and Our Lady of Grace Church in Hoboken, New Jersey. His principal mentors include Joseph Flummerfelt, Kenneth Kiesler, Pierre Grandmaison, Stefan Engels, Marion Anderson, Harvey Burgett, and Kynan Johns.
