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Two long-running New York City musical institutions, both of which I’ve somehow never managed to catch, came together on February 5, 2026. The Composer Portraits series at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre has been showcasing the work of contemporary composers for almost three decades. Percussion/piano ensemble Yarn/Wire has been commissioning and playing daring new music since 2005. As I’d never crossed paths with either, Thursday’s concert honoring and featuring composer, violinist and violist Andrew McIntosh seemed the perfect time to remedy both personal lapses.
The evening concluded with the world premiere of a substantial new work commissioned from McIntosh by Miller Theatre itself. But first, we heard some of his past work from the past 13 or so years. Three of those pieces featured members of Yarn/Wire and one was a solo work for violin performed by the composer.
For the new work, McIntosh wove his viola into the percussion vocabulary characteristic of his collaborations with that ensemble.
The full program highlighted the meditative yet continually interesting quality of McIntosh’s work in this format.
In his early work McIntosh used algorithmic composition techniques, but beginning with Hyenas of the Temples of Pleasure (2012-13) he began shifting to a more intuitive process. Hyenas progresses like a story that moves along slowly, episodically, but maintaining a muted kind of focus.
Yarn/Wire often performs music that emphasizes the percussive side of the piano’s dual nature. But the keyboard parts in these four movements were rather surprisingly “pianistic.” Laura Barger and Julia Den Boer, on separate pianos, began the first movement by interweaving bright patterned notes with polyrhythms. With the entry of the vibraphone the music became a meditative flow, punctuated by drums and the click of something like woodblocks.
Bows, Bowls, and Bells
With Russell Greenberg and guest percussionist Dustin Donahue continuing the accented strains, the pianists switched to quietly playing bowed drinking glasses (a favorite instrument of the ensemble Sandbox Percussion too). One had to lean in at first to discern the sounds of the glasses.
Two important pleasures of a Yarn/Wire concert are the visual interest, as the musicians move around the stage to different instrument groups, and the curiosity the various rigs arouse as we try to identify exactly what sort of contraption each member is playing.
The pianos make an opening declaration in the second movement too, this time more sparkling, even agitated. Alongside them rings a bowl being filled with increasing amounts of water that gradually lowers the tone when the side is struck. Here the vibes too are bowed, rather than struck with mallets, producing subtle high hums that later reappeared merging with the viola in Anadiplosis, the new piece.
In the third movement of Hyenas, rough metallic bell tones accompanied still more polyrhythmic harmonizing on the keyboard. This time the piano parts had a ghostly quality. In the fourth, the pianists plucked the piano strings manually amid washes of sound emanating from a hi-hat.
The work ended with a hush, the musicians withdrew, and McIntosh entered with his violin to play the short piece “Arc.” This is a sort of alien lullaby built on just intonation, a tuning McIntosh has often experimented with. The double-stopped sustained tones at first recalled those of the bowed drinking glasses. After a slow meditation, the 3/4 beat sped up and gained volume, then subsided to quiet again. “Arc” is a thought-provoking exploration of the sometimes unfamiliar sounds that lurk within the body of an all-too-familiar instrument.
Sculpting Sound
Nonstandard tuning also emerged in we see the flying bird for two percussionists. This fascinating piece features detuned vibraphones, bowed and struck, along with tubular bells and other percussion, creating otherworldly microtonal resonances. To acquire some of these aluminum tubes, McIntosh salvages pieces, and cuts them to produce the precise tones he wants. Learning this struck a chord in my mind with the processes of metalworking sculptors like David Smith.
The tubular bells hung about the stage in various settings throughout the concert, played often, and with a variety of sometimes surprising effects.
(Aside: is this the winter of the tubular bells in New York?)
Most meditative of all was “Little Jimmy at the End of Winter,” a beautiful movement from a longer work in which McIntosh melds tubular bells, piano (here heavily percussive), and cymbals with recorded wind and birdsong to create multilayered washes of sound.
Anadiplosis, the new Miller Theatre commission, is all about the juxtaposition of sharp accents with background drones and fades. Piano notes, chords, and string-plucks provide the former, viola and vibes the latter.
The viola hugs the background much of the time – McIntosh even put it down for a stretch to produce a faint whirring sound by scraping his hand across a metal plate – but it takes prominence for a short time towards the end. In a climactic section, with both pianos in action, the sound gets quite dense, with a lot of resonance and activity. We hear cutting attacks on repeated notes, and even some unisons among the instruments (rare in McIntosh’s work).
As tension builds, the instruments seem to take on human personalities in a wordless poetic drama. The pianists pull wires across the piano strings creating drones sometimes indistinguishable from the long notes coming from the viola. Yet the viola is tuned differently from the pianos (or perhaps just playing microtones they can’t?) creating an eerie, skewed sound that’s weirdly beautiful.
Next up in the Composer Portraits series: Lisa Bielawa. Find Yarn/Wire’s schedule and more at their website. All you need to know about Andrew McIntosh – he is also a baroque violinist – can be found online as well.
