BlackBox Ensemble

Program

TBA

Free
a Shinkoskey Noon Concert

About BlackBox Ensemble

Named as “ambitious” by TimeOut and The New Yorker, the NYC-based BlackBox Ensemble is a collective of contemporary music performers dedicated to exploring the wide-ranging world of the music of our time. Their 2025–26 season includes a return to The Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, debuts at National Sawdust and Bowerbird, and residencies at Penn State, George Washington University, UC Davis, San Francisco State University, Williams College and a year-long appointment as Ensemble in Residence with University of Richmond, and more.

Their name, BlackBox, comes from the many meanings the term holds. In theatre, a black box is a bare, flexible space — four dark walls that can transform into anything, creating an environment ripe for bold experimentation and intimate connection. In science and technology, a black box is a system with known inputs and outputs, but the mystery of what happens inside makes it compelling. For us, we believe music, as a cultural medium, lives in that same space — enacting an ambiguous but vital relationship between artistic expression and social life, where sound, expression, and human experience collide in ways that can’t always be explained, but always resonate. Guided by the spirit of the theatrical black box, we create programs that invite risk, innovation, and connection, presenting contemporary classical music in ways that feel fresh, human, and alive.

Their 2024–25 season included concerts at home in New York and around the country, including a thrilling run of our Speculative Listening program at Bang On A Can Long Play Festival, The Whitney Museum, and Chatham PS21 curated by Eastman scholar Isaac Jean-François, as well as performances at Southern Exposure Series at the University of South Carolina, Timucua Arts Foundation, and residencies at the University of Chicago, University of Florida, and University of Central Florida.

Their 2023–24 season included touring engagements in Washington, DC, Florida, Michigan, and throughout the Northeast as well as residencies at University of Florida, University of Michigan, NYU, and the Kaufman Music Center’s Special Music School. The season opened with The Sound of Space Between Us, a site-specific, outdoor music and dance performance at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts conceived by our flutist Annie Nikunen. We also presented the live premiere of Borrowed Landscape, a radio play by German playwright duo tauchgold with music by Dai Fujikura, at the Noguchi Museum, in a program that also features music by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, inti figgis-vizueta, and Toru Takemistu. We reprised our performance of Borrowed Landscape at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art as part of a two-concert series. In addition, we celebrated our 5-year anniversary with our inaugural BlackBox Festival, including our debut at Roulette Intermedium.