Oct 23: GRAMMY-Winning Experiential Orchestra Opens Season with The Music of Anna Clyne Featuring Cellist Inbal Segev in the New York City Premiere of DANCE
GRAMMY®️-Winning Experiential Orchestra (EXO) Opens 2026-2027 Season on October 23 with An Embrace of Sound: The Music of Anna Clyne
Featuring Cellist Inbal Segev in the New York City Premiere of Clyne’s DANCE
James Blachly, Music Director
Friday, October 23, 2026 at 8pm
Pre-Concert Conversation with Anna Clyne at 7:15pm
The DiMenna Center for Classical Music | 450 W. 37th St., New York, NY
Tickets & Information
New York, NY – The GRAMMY®️-winning Experiential Orchestra (EXO) led by founding Music Director James Blachly will open its 2026-2027 season, titled Beauty in the Face of Adversity and running from October 2026 through June 2027, with An Embrace of Sound: The Music of Anna Clyne, on Friday, October 23, 2026 at 8pm at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music (450 W. 37th St.). A pre-concert conversation with Anna Clyne, moderated by New Music USA President & CEO Vanessa Rose, starts at 7:15pm. EXO will present four immersive programs this season, each reflecting the mission of the orchestra – to curate programs that embrace the unique acoustics and characters of each venue, creating a one-of-a-kind listening environment and a new experience of sound.
This season opening concert on October 23, An Embrace of Sound, is a celebration of the music of composer Anna Clyne and features the New York City premiere of her piece DANCE for cello and orchestra, performed with cello soloist Inbal Segev (who commissioned and recorded the work). The program also includes Clyne’s This Midnight Hour, an evocative tour de force for orchestra, which was written in part as a response to the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and Juan Ramón Jiménez. Clyne’s Within Her Arms, written in the wake of the death of her mother, opens the program, with the EXO strings surrounding the audience at the DiMenna Center in a sound embrace.
Experiential Orchestra Music Director James Blachly says, “This season brings together extraordinary composers, internationally acclaimed soloists, and beautiful venues to create concerts that we hope will speak directly to our audience from a place of strength and comfort. For our season opening concert, we embrace the way that Anna Clyne's music is uniquely attuned to the way we can turn to music and poetry in life's hardest moments. The program includes Within Her Arms, written after the death of Anna’s mother, an elegy for string orchestra – this is music that is imbued with grief. The work opens with a short descending theme that becomes the basis for a musical meditation on love and life and loss. I couldn’t be more honored to present the New York City premiere of Anna’s DANCE for cello and orchestra, with the incredible soloist Inbal Segev. Each of the concerto’s five movements corresponds to a line of the Rumi poem that inspired the piece. I am greatly looking forward to bringing this expansive and lyrical piece to New York with the cellist for whom it was written.”
After co-commissioning Anna Clyne’s concerto DANCE, Inbal Segev premiered the work under Cristian Măcelaru’s leadership at the 2019 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California and recorded it alongside Elgar’s iconic concerto with Marin Alsop and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Released by Avie, the album was an instant success, topping the Amazon Classical Concertos chart and inspiring glowing praise from The Guardian, BBC Radio 3 and other outlets; DANCE’s opening movement was named among NPR Music’s “Favorite Songs of 2020,” receiving more than twelve million listens on Spotify. Combining “thrillingly projected, vibrato-rich playing” (Washington Post) with “complete dedication and high intelligence” (San Francisco Classical Voice), Inbal Segev makes solo appearances at leading international venues and with preeminent orchestras and conductors worldwide. Celebrated for her fresh insights into music’s great masterworks, the New York-based Israeli American cellist is equally committed to reinvigorating the cello repertoire and has commissioned and premiered major new works from an international who’s who of today’s foremost contemporary composers.
Up next in EXO’s season, on February 20, 2027 at Roulette Intermedium (509 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn, NY), the orchestra presents Music in a Time of War, a concert featuring three acclaimed soloists: Paul Neubauer, Stewart Goodyear, and Michelle Barzel Ross. On May 22, 2027 at the New York Society for Ethical Culture (2 W 64th St., New York, NY), EXO performs the choral music of Arvo Pärt, expanding the orchestra’s ongoing relationship with the Estonian composer. The final event of the season is a reprise of EXO’s celebrated collaboration with composer Brad Balliett in his A Field Guide to Imaginary Birds, to be held outdoors at Inwood Hill Park in Spring 2027 (details TBA).
About Experiential Orchestra:
The GRAMMY®️-winning Experiential Orchestra (EXO) brings audiences close to the music by engaging listeners through imaginative, immersive, and interactive concert experiences. Founded by Music Director James Blachly in 2009, EXO’s performances and recordings have been described as “strikingly persuasive” by the San Francisco Chronicle and “immaculate” by Musical America, and have been praised for having “luscious tone and poise” by Classics Today.
EXO was founded to forge transformative concerts in community, where each curated performance is imbued with a generous spirit of celebration, facilitating the exploration of what Blachly calls, “a new experience of sound” by audiences. The orchestra’s performances take place in and outside the concert hall with audiences invited to participate in unorthodox ways. EXO has performed the music of Arvo Pärt in the Temple of Dendur at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, invited audiences to dance during Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker at National Sawdust, enveloped the audience in concerts at Lincoln Center with audience and orchestra members sitting together, and presented Symphonie fantastique and Petrushka with circus choreography at The Muse in Brooklyn.
Recent highlights have included a concert at The Library of Congress in Washington, DC; an immersive performance of Strauss’s Four Last Songs with cellist Andrew Yee and soprano Sarah Brailey; and an ongoing close relationship with the Arvo Pärt Centre, Michael Pärt, and the Estonian Embassy in yearly presentations of the music of Arvo Pärt. In January 2024, EXO performed Pärt’s masterwork Passio at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, offering audiences the opportunity to experience the concert while reclining on yoga mats. In March 2024, the orchestra co-presented a four-day Julia Perry Centenary Celebration and Festival in New York, coinciding with Perry’s 100th birthday that month.
EXO is known for imaginative and groundbreaking programming that frequently advocates for under-celebrated masterpieces and composers. The orchestra’s world premiere recording of Dame Ethel Smyth’s The Prison (1930) was released on Chandos Records in 2020 to international critical acclaim in The New York Times, Gramophone, The New Yorker, The Guardian, and many other publications. The album won the GRAMMY for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album in 2021 – the first GRAMMY ever awarded for Smyth’s music. EXO’s world premiere recording of Julia Perry’s Violin Concerto, with soloist Curtis Stewart, was released on the Bright Shiny Things label in March 2024 and earned two GRAMMY nominations.
EXO is led by Founder and Music Director James Blachly, General Manager Sandy Choi, Concertmasters Alex Fortes and Henry Wang, Personnel Manager Arthur Sato, and Artistic Advisor Patrick Castillo.
About Founding Music Director James Blachly:
James Blachly is a GRAMMY®-winning conductor dedicated to enriching the concert experience by connecting with audiences in memorable and meaningful ways. James Blachly serves as Music Director of Experiential Orchestra and Johnstown Symphony Orchestra. He is a versatile guest conductor in diverse repertoire for orchestras including New York Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and WDR Funkhausorchester. A strong supporter of composers of our time, Blachly has commissioned and premiered more than 40 works by composers including Jessie Montgomery, Courtney Bryan, Viet Cuong, Michi Wiancko, Kate Copeland Ettinger, Tommy Daugherty, Patrick Castillo, Brad and Doug Balliett, and many others. In recent seasons, he has collaborated with soloists Daniel Hope, Paul Jacobs, Julia Bullock, Dashon Burton, Michelle Cann, Andrew Yee, Curtis Stewart, Simone Porter, and more. In addition to his work with Experiential Orchestra, with the Johnstown Symphony, Blachly has conducted the orchestra at the Flight 93 Memorial for the 20th Anniversary of 9/11, in a former steel mill in a concert that was featured on Katie Couric’s America Inside Out, at the First Summit Arena at the War Memorial, and in eight seasons the orchestra has increased season ticket sales and annual giving each by more than 50%. In 2021, he received a commendation by the City of Johnstown and the Johnstown chapter of the NAACP. In recent seasons, Blachly has introduced an annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Juneteenth, and youth concert. For more information, visit www.jamesblachly.com.