Past Concerts

A concert addressing systemic poverty and over-criminalization, including narratives told by (ex-) incarcerated people

Premieres by Orlando Jacinto Garcia, Ralph Mendoza & rapper AJ Peoples, Damian Norfleet & dancer/puppeteer Maura Gahan, and Gregg Welcher

Works by Frederic Rzewski and Olivier Messiaen

Live & Streamed Concert

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2022 at 7 PM

165 W 86th St, New York City 10024

Followed by a Q&A with Father Greg Boyle and the artists

Tickets: $20 general | $15 students & seniors

A portion of the box office will be given to Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice.

If kinship was our goal, we would no longer be promoting justice. We would be celebrating it. Because here is the truth:

No kinship, no justice. No kinship, no equality.

– Father Greg Boyle

Clockwise (from top left): Orlando Jacinto Garcia, Damian Norfleet, Maura Gahan, Gregg Welcher, Ralph Mendoza, AJ Peoples.

New Recording to be released in the Spring of 2022 on Albany Records 

F as in Frank is a group exhibition that brings together different artistic practices to reflect on the power of being frank and using one’s artistic voice to directly and sincerely address the truth. 

We are thrilled to collaborate with the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation to present “To Whom the Shoe Fits,” a special evening exploring the essence of the creative process through words, music, dance, and images.

Our signature concert this season is inspired by Father Gregory Boyle’s project Homeboy Industries and his book Tattoos on the Heart, in which he advocates for seeing the world not as “us versus them,” but simply as “us,” a people together working towards social healing through compassion. 

Theatre for the New City
155 1st Avenue, New York

Fallen Societies is a collaboration between Ensemble Pi and the famed Bread & Puppet Theater with music by activist composers Susan Botti, Kristin Nordeval.The founder and director of the Bread & Puppet Theater, Peter Schumann, will illustrate the distructions and disruptions that come with capitalism through his characteristically thoughtful and powerful action.

Reparations NOW! is Ensemble Pi’s new project, inspired by Ta-Nehisi Coates’ congressional testimony and Ibram X. Kendi’s best-seller book, How to Be an Antiracist – both of which offer powerful and compelling arguments in support of reparations for the African-American community.

MOCA Cleveland

MOCA Cleveland presents Ensemble Pi in a collaborative project bringing together music, poetry, and visual art to explore the pressing issue of incarceration. The event combines original poetry written by incarcerated women and performed by Daniel Gray-Kontar from Twelve Literary Arts with a newly commissioned work by Allison Loggins-Hull and timeless masterpieces from Frederic Rzewski’s “Attica” and Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time.” 

Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation

Helen Evans, Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator for Byzantine Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Robert Storr, artist, curator, and writer, will discuss the Byzantine manifestations throughout six decades of Greek-American artist Stephen Antonakos's work. The presentation will be illustrated with projections of his Neon Panels, Rooms, Chapels, Artist's Books, drawings, and more. The evening will commence with a selection of Nikos Skalkottas’ piano pieces played by Idith Meshulam Korman, recognized pianist and founder of the modernist Ensemble Pi.

The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation presents a concert by Idith Meshulam Korman, designed in response to the paintings of Milton Resnick.

Presented by Theater for the New City & Crystal Field 

A concert program designed by ALICE SHIELDS, SHEREE CLEMENT, ELEANOR CORY, NINA C. YOUNG, IDITH MESHULAM KORMAN, LYNNE BUCHANAN—four composers, a pianist-ensemble leader, and an environmental photographer.

Two operas and two meditations for our Planet, presented by the Association for the Promotion of New Music on Nov. 20, 2018, at 7:30 p.m. at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in Manhattan. 

An Evening of Music and Art in connection with the exhibition New Works by Rebecca Allan and Richard Kooyman 

Musica Reginae presents a concert of new music by New York composers, inspired by Catherine Schmitt, James Joyce, Duke Ellington and Thelonius Monk.  The concert includes the world premiere of a partially staged chamber opera, featuring Ensemble Pi with soprano Elizabeth Farnum and conductor Carl Bettendorf, as well as a set of chamber music performed by the ClaraDuo (Asuka Elias, clarinet and Aleksandra Kocheva, piano).

Tenri Cultural Intitute, 43 W 13th St, NYC  

This special program will include works by Laura Kaminsky and all three of our Department of Music faculty composers: Sidney Marquez Boquiren, Christopher Lyndon-Gee and Paul Moravec.

All but forgotten today, Marianna Martines was one of the greatest composers of her time. Ensemble Pi restores Martines' place among her male counterparts in this theatrical concert featuring her music performed alongside classical favorites by her 18th-century Viennese contemporaries, including Haydn and Mozart.

APNM presents Idith Meshulam's estimable Ensemble Pi in a concert devoted to our Call for Scores Winners and APNM members' music. 

APNM presents Idith Meshulam's estimable Ensemble Pi in a concert devoted to our Call for Scores Winners and APNM members' music. 

Catch Ensemble members Barry Crawford - flute and Idith Korman - piano

From the NY Times Review of the concert : "The first was an evening of contemporary chamber music and opera extracts at Roulette in Downtown Brooklyn that was dedicated to the Black Lives Matter movement. The concert was presented by Ensemble Pi, a mixed chamber group that, in its marketing materials, defines itself as “socially conscious.”

The Association for the Promotion of New Music (APNM) will present a concert of chamber music performed by Ensemble Pi, pianist Ishmael Wallace, and trombonist Haim Avitsur at the National Opera Center on Wednesday, May 18, 2016 at 8PM.

The Trials of Patricia Isasa is a new opera in two acts composed by Kristin Norderval with libretto by the Obie Award winning playwright Naomi Wallace. The premiere will be directed by Pauline Vaillancourt, the founder of the Montreal based opera company Chants Libres, compagnie lyrique de création.

7:30pm (doors open at 7:00)
Sheen Center for Thought & Culture in New York City.

The program will feature compositions written about or to oppose captivity. We have a special commission by Eleanor Cory, inspired by poems written by women inmates at Rikers Island, along with Frederic Rzewski's Attica (1972) for narrator and chamber group, based on a letter by one of the leaders of the Attica’s riots, and the sublime Quartet for the End of Time (1941) by Olivier Messiaen. Our special guest Joseph Assadourian will be the narrator of the evening, and also presents excerpts from his tragicomic theatrical piece, The Bullpen.