NOVUS

Trinity Church’s new music orchestra, NOVUS, is a key player on the contemporary music scene. These “expert and versatile musicians” (The New Yorker) perform new music from all corners of the repertoire, meeting “every challenge with an impressive combination of discipline and imagination” (New York Classical Review). The orchestra’s Carnegie Hall debut, made with a formidable pairing of Ives and Ginastera, prompted The New York Times to declare that “adventure and ambition go hand in hand at Trinity.”

With its annual appearances at the PROTOTYPE Festival, New York’s premier celebration of contemporary opera, NOVUS and Trinity Church have partnered in the development of several major new works. These include Emma O’Halloran’s newest opera pairing Trade and Mary Motorhead; Du Yun’s Angel’s Bone, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music; and Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s Breaking the Waves, named “Best New Opera for 2016” by the Music Critics Association of North America.

NOVUS recorded and performed in the East Coast premiere of Ellen Reid and librettist Roxie Perkins’  p r i s m, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2019. Additional PROTOTYPE highlights include the ensemble’s East Coast premiere of Reid’s Dreams of the New World, and the world premiere of David T. Little’s revised version of Am I Born, which was recorded with NOVUS and Trinity Choir.

NOVUS has forged strong links with many of today’s leading composers, collaborating with Paola Prestini, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Daniel Felsenfeld, and Jonathan Newman on Trinity’s “Mass Reimaginings” commissioning project, and giving world premiere performances of Laura Schwendinger’s opera Artemisia and Prestini’s interdisciplinary The Hubble Cantata, which drew an open-air audience of thousands to Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. 

The ensemble’s recent recordings include the Grammy-nominated LUNA PEARL WOOLF: Fire and Flood, Paola Prestini’s The Hubble Cantata, Du Yun’s Angel’s Bone; Trevor Weston's Choral Works; Elena Ruehr's Averno; Edward Thomas's new opera Anna Christie; Ellen Reid’s p r i s m; and Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 5.