Biophony Pop-Up NYC 2022 is presented by Metropolis Ensemble, with additional support from Make Music New York. Biophony is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Cultural Affairs, The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund, and a constellation of generous donors and foundations.

July • August • September 2021
Locations across New York City

Pop-up Biophonic events are crowd-sourced by Metropolis Ensemble musicians themselves. These events will occur throughout the New York City metropolitan area and beyond from mid-July and leading up to the Biophony Festival 2021 in late September.

Each Biophonic event will be tagged on a heat-map, showing when and where it occurred and what pieces were performed — help us spread new music throughout our entire city and reach new audiences in new places.

Offered free to the public in response to a season without precedent, all performances occur in a supported framework. Check-in for daily updates on our social media platforms for locations and times!

What to Expect

For the listener: your decisions will shape your experience. Each performance and listener-experience of Biophony will be unique, as determined by the unlimited flexibility of instrumentations and groupings, the topography of the site, and the freedom given to participants to choose their own musical adventure.

Biophony encourages exploration between music, site, listeners self-determination, and musicians interacting with all these moving elements. 

For Musicians

This is your opportunity to choose your own adventure and create your own concerts!! Pick your own time, place, and outdoor location, gather with colleagues of your choice to form any combination of 3 to 8 instruments. Explore the city’s parks, gardens, and iconic public spaces — bring music to your neighborhood or beyond!

• Create your own novel groupings (4-10 players)

• Select any number of newly commissioned Biophony works to intermix and play.

• In your pod, consider the surroundings of your location, proximity to other ensembles and what they are performing, and the listener participants who are present.

70 composers have been commissioned to create a repository of music for non-specified instruments — once you’ve registered for your own event, we will provide you with sets of scores, parts, kits, and everything you need for your Biophonic Pop-Up event!

Once you arrive at your site, a Metropolis Ensemble staff member will greet you, set up signs, and assist your event. From there, choose any number of pieces to perform for anyone passing by.

For Composers

Create your own small collaborative groups and together, compose new music for nonspecific instruments.

• Creative prompts, loops, graphic scores, games, cells — invent your own novel system to achieve your open score.

• Individual pieces commissioned for Biophony, are for outdoor, acoustic-only performances.

• Spaced throughout a large geographic area, park, or field, pieces for Biophony are experienced individually and as a whole.

Each of our digital projects, developed in the midst of the pandemic, provide opportunities for our artists to do what they do best: make and share new music with music lovers everywhere.