“The City of Tomorrow is a wind quintet that is always more than a wind quintet. Live shows feature lighting, staging and set pieces, electronics, and the kind of ritualistic feel reminiscent of a Yoko Ono or Marina Abramović conceptual performance. The City of Tomorrow: Waves, Breaths, Dead Cities is no exception, featuring a custom set by Memphis carpenter Celeste Von Ahnen, video work by Breezy Lucia, also of Memphis, and choreography by the ensemble's horn player, Leander Star.

The first half of the show recalls the shutdown and the long months of quarantine, starting with a blithe reworking of a Vivaldi Concerto and concluding with Jacob Druckman's mournful Delizie Contente Che L'Alme Beate, a work for electronics and live winds that quotes liberally from Francesco Cavalli's 1649 aria of the same name. Olof Cornéer's minimalist work, Waves, Breaths, Dead Cities and Leander Star's quarantine project Shoulder to Shoulder take the audience through memories of empty streets and monotonous days.

The second half begins with Luciano Berio's intricate and vibrant work, riccorenze. Appropriately, the score calls for the musicians to be spread out as far as possible from each other on the stage, the perfect music for social distancing. As the musicians become situated closely again, the concert comes to a powerful and hopeful ending with PUMA by the young Peruvian composer Daniel Cueto.”

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