thingNY exist as a collective of musicians who, according to their mission statement, “create and perform theatrically charged experimental music, champion the work of avant garde and contemporary classical composers, and collaborate across disciplines, media and genres”. Since forming in 2006, the ensemble have produced many works that explore different possibilities of words and text via experimental composition.

This featured project PASSOVER was written by composer and playwright Rick Burkhardt for a sextet of speaking instrumentalists, all seated at a dinner table on which there lies a double bass.

“In this movement,” says thingNY member Jeffrey Young, “we hear a story from our protagonist's college days, when a friend he looked up to approached him with a moral quandary. I narrate this movement while accompanying myself on violin, Gelsey Bell, Paul Pinto and Dave Ruder alternate between providing a chorus of questions and playing percussion and clarinet, Erin Rogers performs on saxophone, and Andrew Livingston plays a double bass lying flat on a table.”

PASSOVER will be released as an album in 2021.

Read more about thingNY in an interview in The Wire 440. Subscribers can access the article via the digital archive.