Summer Solstice Celebration
Music for Sunrise and Sunset at Brooklyn Botanic Garden
June 20, 2025
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Cherry Esplanade
990 Washington Avenue
Sunrise Performance: 5:15–6:00am
Sunset Performance: 7:30–9:00pm
Free with Garden admission
Photo by Michael Stewart, courtesy of Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Sunrise
Welcome the longest day of the year with a transformative sunrise meditation on the Cherry Esplanade.
Sunrise Performance: 5:15–6:00am at Cherry Esplanade
Free with Garden admission
Witness the World Premiere of composer/saxophonist Matthew Evan Taylor’s Afropneuma, accompanied by Metropolis Ensemble’s chamber orchestra, for a guided musical meditation as dawn unfolds around you with a 5:27am sunrise, celebrating the start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
Inspired by Taylor’s AfroPneumatic series, Afropneuma explores the profound connection between breath, sound, and Black identity. Through immersive breathwork and sustained drones, this new work invites participants to become part of a communal soundscape.
Photo by Michael Stewart, courtesy of Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Sunset
End your evening where it began, immersed in a profound listening experience on the Cherry Esplanade.
Sunset Performance: 7:30–9:00pm at Cherry Esplanade
Free with Garden admission
After the sun arcs the stunning 52-acre gardens, experience an encore performance of composer/saxophonist Matthew Evan Taylor’s Afropneuma, a rich exploration of breath, sound, and Black identity.
Then, let the energy build towards an 8:30pm sunset for composer Erik Hall’s World Premiere arrangement and visionary reimagining of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, taking you on a hypnotic journey —its rhythmic pulse transformed through electric guitars, basses, prepared pianos, Fender Rhodes, synths, and voices.
Set beneath the canopy of Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s iconic Cherry Esplanade, this one-of-a-kind performance unites the bold artistry of Metropolis Ensemble, led here by guest conductor and pianist Georgia Mills.
Highlights from Biophony Solstice 2024 at Brooklyn Botanic Garden
About the Project
For the second year in a row, Metropolis Ensemble and Brooklyn Botanic Garden presents “Biophony: Solstice” in sweeping sunrise and sunset performances by up-and-coming composers and renowned musicians.
Last year’s Solstice event featured Simeon ten Holt's “Canto Ostinato,” in a World Premiere arrangement and Metropolis Ensemble commission from composers Benjamin Wallace, Ledah Finck, and David Leon. 52 musicians — including Erik Hall and Sandbox Percussion — performed for an audience of over 2,350.
This immersive series is an ongoing partnership and artistic collaboration between Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Metropolis Ensemble.
Previous projects include the “Biophony: SoundGarden” installation in the conservatory gardens in 2023; “For the Birds” opening celebration in June 2022; and “Biophony Festival,” an outdoor musical adventure across the gardens, in both May 2022 and September 2021. Thousands of visitors have experienced these performances from BBG's "Art in the Garden" series.
Biophony Solstice is a site-specific commissioning project by Metropolis Ensemble and Brooklyn Botanic Garden. “Afropneuma” by Matthew Evan Taylor is a 2024/25 BBG and Metropolis Ensemble co-commission. Steve Reich: “Music for 18 Musicians” is a World Premiere arrangement by Erik Hall. Banner image by Phong Tran (2023).
As Heard on NPR Morning Edition and WNYC New Sounds with John Schaefer (2024)
As Seen on Talkhouse with Erik Hall (2024)
“It was new to me; it was new to Andrew; it was new to Sandbox. It will likely be new to the vast majority of our concert audience. For lovers of Reich, Glass, and Riley, there is simply zero reason to miss Simeon ten Holt. And in the streaming age, I’m frankly amazed and refreshed to find that there is still 50-year old music out there for one to discover and receive as if it were written for them alone.”
About “Afropneuma”
Since 2022, Matthew Evan Taylor has been developing a new composition technique and framework centered on breathing. “AfroPneumaism” means “black breath” to serve as a reminder that no matter your amount of privilege or lack of privilege, you have the right to breathe, the right to take up space, and the right to not wait to be invited into spaces that were already ours to own.
This intimate meditation is one in a series of recent works Matthew created around breath. Metropolis Ensemble has collaborated with Matthew since 2016, with projects that include Biophony, For the Birds, and our multi-year partnership with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Life Returns / Postcards to The Met.
About “Music for 18 Musicians”
In 2020, Erik Hall released an acclaimed and visionary reimagining of Steve Reich’s mesmerizing masterpiece, “Music for 18 Musicians,” the first album in a trilogy of reinterpretations that included Simeon ten Holt’s “Canto Ostinato.”
Erik performed and recorded the album in its entirety at home in Michigan, using electric guitars, basses, prepared pianos, Fender Rhodes, synths, and voices. After the success of last year’s Solstice, presenting Erik’s arrangement of “Music for 18 Musicians” with Metropolis Ensemble was an ideal time and backdrop to showcase the piece in a live setting.
Recent Press
Audience Feedback (2024)
“The early morning Solstice concert and event was SPECTACULAR! I delighted in the beautiful music, birds chirping, and a glorious sunrise in such a special garden.”
“The morning solstice concert was amazing… no pun intended it was stellar!”
“Downright magical… I was so grateful for the experience and the sense of community with other attendees taking in this work of art.”
“I’ve been to the garden a number of times before today, but this performance of Canto Ostinato was very special.”
“To be in nature and to see a performance with a fifty-piece orchestra performance was fantastic!”
Featured Artists
Matthew Evan Taylor
Composer and Saxophones / Dr. Matthew Evan Taylor is an AfroPnuematic composer, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser who has “…wrestled with the societal boundaries of Black artistry only to blast them apart…” (Dr. Kori Hill, I Care if You Listen) through creating music that is “insistent and defiant…envelopingly hypnotic” (Alan Young, Lucid Culture). An artist at the intersection of concert music, free improvisation, and multi-disciplinary performance, Matthew has worked with many leading artists and ensembles. His forthcoming album, Life Returns, will be released in May on Navona Records. He serves as Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of California, Berkeley. More »
Erik Hall
Arranger and Keyboards / From an early age Erik Hall played piano, guitar, and drums. He was a percussionist in the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra and studied music and audio engineering at the University of Michigan. Erik composed and produced the film score for The Night Clerk (2020) and contributed music to The Mountain, which premiered worldwide at the Venice International Film Festival and in the US at Sundance. In 2020 Erik released his solo re-creation of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, which won the 2021 Libera Award for Best Classical Record. He followed in 2023 with a multitracked reinterpretation of Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato. More »
Metropolis Ensemble
Metropolis Ensemble is a Grammy-nominated nonprofit organization dedicated to commissioning and producing ambitious creative projects in contemporary music. With a particular focus on expanding opportunities for emerging professional musical creators and performers through collaboration, Metropolis partners with world-class musical artists and institutions to create, commission, and produce site-specific performances, new works, recordings, and digital experiences. Founded by Grammy-nominated conductor Andrew Cyr in 2006, NYC-based Metropolis Ensemble gathers independent expert musicians for each project, inspiring audiences through the creation of new instrumentations and dynamic collaborations. More »
Andrew Cyr
Artistic Director and Producer / A champion of new work, Grammy-nominated conductor Andrew Cyr has led premiere performances at venues ranging from Cité de la Musique (Paris, FR), The Met Museum, Celebrate Brooklyn(!), Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall, New Victory Theatre, Hamer Hall (Melbourne, AU), Radio City Music Hall, BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House, and The Tonight Show. Cyr's work as conductor has been described by Esa-Pekka Salonen as "precise, rhythmically incisive and fluid; he made complex new pieces sound natural and organic.” Cyr’s passion for creating new platforms for outstanding composers and performing artists led him to found Metropolis Ensemble in 2006. More »
Georgia Mills
Georgia Markakis Mills is a Greek-American conductor, pianist, and maker of classical and contemporary music. Georgia completed her Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in Conducting at the Eastman School of Music in May 2024, when she was awarded the Walter Hagen Conducting Prize and was nominated for the Lecture Recital Prize in recognition of her research on micropolyphonic transformations in the music of György Ligeti. At Eastman, she served as Assistant Conductor of the Musica Nova Ensemble under the direction of conductor Brad Lubman. Georgia held graduate teaching awards in conducting and music theory at Eastman, and was an Adjunct Professor of Orchestration at Roberts Wesleyan University. More »
DITHER
Electric Guitar Quartet / DITHER, a New York based electric guitar quartet, is dedicated to an eclectic mix of experimental repertoire which spans composed, improvised, and electronic music. Formed in 2007, the quartet has performed across the United States and abroad, presenting new commissions, original compositions, multimedia works, and large guitar ensemble pieces. Dither’s members are Taylor Levine, Joshua Lopes, James Moore, and Brendon Randall-Myers. They have released four full-length albums, including Dither plays Zorn on Tzadik, featuring the premiere recordings of several of John Zorn's improvisational game pieces, which was named one of the year's “best avant albums” by Rolling Stone. More »
