A One Year Journey in Thirteen Chapters

March 2021—March 2022

MetLiveArts, the performance series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Metropolis Ensemble present a monthly video series featuring composer and performer Matthew Evan Taylor in collaboration with musicians from Metropolis Ensemble and RAJAS. Witness a time-lapse musical performance of an original work by composer and saxophonist Matthew Evan Taylor and his collaborators in this unique, year-long MetLiveArts commission produced and developed by Metropolis Ensemble.

Over the course of the year, these elements formed the creative inspiration for an evening-length work, Life Returns, culminating in a live performance of the completed composition on March 24, 2022.

To date, the twelve films in Postcards to The Met have received over 350K views via Instagram.

Life Returns

At the culmination of our Postcards project, MetLiveArts and Metropolis Ensemble presented Life Returns, a live performance of the completed composition on March 24, 2022 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The evening-length new work featured Matthew Evan Taylor, RAJAS Ensemble led by Rajna Swaminathan, Ganavya (solo voice), and many of the Metropolis artists featured in the Postcards project.

Metropolis and MetLiveArts presented the digital premiere of our “Life Returns” concert on February 14, 2023 via YouTube.

About the Project

Each month, Taylor sparked the musical dialogue by drafting the first layer of the composition. Working remotely, musicians from Metropolis Ensemble and the South Asian jazz collective RAJAS (“unlike any other on the scene,” New York Times) led by mridangam artist Rajna Swaminathan either respond to or build on that foundation.

This twelve-part series—presented on IGTV on The Met’s Instagram account and Metropolis Ensemble’s website—offers an intimate, real-time view as Taylor and his partners explore African American, South Indian, and Western European musical practices.

Postcards to The Met commissioned and produced by MetLiveArts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Department of Live Arts, bringing the Museum into conversation with contemporary creators and encouraging the discovery of untested modes of performance. This program is made possible by the Adrienne Arsht Fund for Resilience through Art.

Artwork by Juniper Creative LLC, commissioned by Metropolis Ensemble (2021).

Listen to The Unheard Mixtapes

Matthew Evan Taylor’s self-described artistic manifesto, commissioned by Metropolis Ensemble during the pandemic, was unveiled in five parts from September 2020—March 2021 and released on New Amsterdam Records, just ahead of the collaborative Postcards to The Met project.

Each album features original art from the team at Juniper Creative, LLC. Though recorded in a pandemic reality, the lo-fi/DIY mixtape ethos is the confluence of a longstanding aesthetic to which Taylor has been drawn.