Flame Keepers 28: Cristina Spinei

Flame Keepers

Cristina Spinei

August 23, 2021

Travel back in time to experience any Flame Keeper's work. The most recent artists are at the bottom of this page.

About the Artist

"Composer and performer Cristina Spinei (pronounced spin-AY) has written for orchestra (Racine Symphony Orchestra, Lafayette Symphony Orchestra) and chamber ensemble (New York Piano Quartet, Intersection) but she is most known for her work with dance, having been commissioned by Nashville Ballet, the New York Choreographic Institute, Parsons Dance, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, and many more. Growing up with dreams of becoming a ballerina, Spinei has channeled her love for dance into a devotion to musical movement, resulting in a style infused with “lyricism and rhythmic vitality.” (Nashville Scene)

Cristina has made her home in Nashville since 2014, and has since established herself as one of Music City’s most versatile, forward-thinking musicians: Nashville Arts dubbed her “gifted and engaging”, while The East Nashvillian praises her “adventuresome imagination.” Self-described as “minimalish,” Cristina anchors her musical ideas in melody, movement, and loops." More »

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Newsroom

The latest news and updates from Metropolis.

The Sound Recyclers

During the second semester of Youth Works, Metropolis Ensemble’s 40-week education program teaching music composition and creativity to 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders at PS 11 School, Cristina Spinei has been concentrating our weekly lessons on rhythm. After learning about different rhythms and making our own percussion instruments, she thought it would be fun for the class to have a recording session.

Students performed rhythms that they composed and notated on instruments which they built themselves the week before. They constructed drums, shakers, and mallets out of everyday objects to better understand the various performance possibilities with percussion. One student even turned an ordinary drum into a maraca and added rubber bands to make it a “guitar.” Everyone loved hearing their own music and performance on CD. At the end of the percussion solos, you will hear excerpts of The Sound Recyclers performing at their first “recording session.”



Stay tuned for news about our year-end concert project this June at Youth Works, where Cristina will create an arrangement of the students’ compositions to be premiered in a concert by the Metropolis Ensemble and offered to the entire PS 11 school community.

The Metropolis Ensemble would like to thank the van Otterloo Foundation for generously supporting our education initiatives, Youth Works and Wet Ink.

Metropolis Youth Works Program Bringing Music to Life with Kids

To say that Cristina Spinei’s experience teaching for Metropolis Ensemble’s Youth Works has been successful would be an understatement. Now halfway through this year’s program at Public School 11 in Manhattan, Cristina wrote a report to capture some of the amazing progress her students are making.

Teaching at P.S. 11 for one semester has been exciting, challenging, and extremely rewarding. My students are imaginative and open to learning about music that they have had little exposure to. On the first day of class, I asked everyone to name a few composers. The responses I got were “Britney Spears, Jay-Z, Jennifer Lopez, 50 Cent, and Mozart.” There was a lot of concern among the students that the music we were learning about would be written by “old dead guys” and would sound “old-fashioned.” After the first month of lessons, the students were able to identify the music of Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Mozart, Vivaldi, and Wynton Marsalis.

From Brazilian percussion to Disney’s Fantasia, Cristina has found some inventive and exciting ways to bring music and those “old dead guys” to life! At the end of the school year, Metropolis Ensemble will present a concert showcasing the students’ work with Cristina.

Read the full report (PDF)…

Cristina Spinei Named 2007-08 Youth Works Composer

Metropolis Ensemble welcomes its 2007-08 Youth Works composer, Cristina Spinei. A Julliard masters student, Cristina will guide students at Manhattan’s PS11 in our exciting composition class, culminating in a concert that showcases the students’ work. Meet Cristina…