Emerald City Music presents, ‘An Evening with Mikaela Bennett’
Originally published on The JOLT News on February 4, 2026.
Join me in celebrating Emerald City Music’s (ECM) 10th anniversary this season!
With a mission to “refresh the (chamber) music experience by creating a platform of excellence where artists and audience transform one another,” this organization has a unique approach to chamber music and the audience experience.
Throughout the year, ECM brings diverse artists and works from around the world playing to both the Olympia and Seattle stages. On Saturday, Feb. 7, Olympia audiences are in for a real treat at the Kenneth J. Minnaert Center for the Arts.
Canadian soprano Mikaela Bennett will be joining members of New York’s Metropolis Ensemble for Broadway gems, jazz standards from the Great American Songbook, and the world premiere of a song cycle by Molly Joyce. More event details can be found here.
The further I got into this story, the more intrigued I became and excited for the concert. Until then, I hope you enjoy these insights from conversations I had withECMArtistic Director Kristin Lee,Metropolis Ensemble Artistic Director Andrew Cyr, and Composer Molly Joyce.
Emerald City Music
Chatting with Lee, I learned that this season is special for a variety of reasons, but mainly because of the collaborative focus woven into this year’s programming.
“We are living in a time that is incredibly divisive,” Lee said. “The arts, especially chamber music, has such an important role right now because we have to create an oasis for people to be away from reality for a bit and be healed by and find solace in music.”
Piecing this truth together with ECM’s collaborative mindset, Lee described how music can become a place where people can come together rather than be driven apart.
The partnership with the Metropolis Ensemble was significant not only because they are from across the nation, but because ECM and Metropolis Ensemble will be able to work together to bring this world premiere of Joyce’s song cycle to both Washington, and then New York.
Lee and Cyr both explained this is significant because it will provide an opportunity to build a greater mileage and tell more people about Joyce and her unique story and compositions, and will ultimately spark further interest.
Metropolis Ensemble
Getting to know Metropolis Ensemble, I learned that it is more of a producer than a traditional ensemble because of the way they are composer centric and focus on premiering new works, centering themselves around each project and bringing new visions to life.
“The types of artists and composers we tend to champion come from many points of inspiration and genres,” Cyr shared.
“We infrastructure their work so we can bring it to more audiences, and maybe even those who did not know they needed to hear a work like this, and that involves taking the risks that larger institutions can’t or won’t take.”
Rather than guiding them along the way, Metropolis Ensemble invites these artists to “take them somewhere they have never been before.
Chatting with Cyr, he described the upcoming concert as a “stunning and sweeping” event.
“The reason we got behind this collaboration with Joyce is because she is in such command of her voice, has such a probing curiosity, and has incredible instincts," Cyr said.
Cyr went on to describe the musically-based friendship between Joyce and Bennett as having an amazing “synergy” between them, and shared how Bennett has requested a variety of new pieces from Joyce over the years. After the concerts, Cyr is hoping to get a recording together of Joyce’s music.
Molly Joyce
Chatting with Joyce, I found her to be very inspirational, empowering, and truly a voice for finding beauty in the midst of all circumstances. With a left hand that has been disabled since a car accident at the age of 7, Joyce has taken those experiences, emotions, and skill sets utilizing music technology that better suits her abilities, and created works that captivate us all.
In this upcoming song cycle, Joyce takes Bennett’s ideas of using a female poet, and incorporates her passion for uplifting the voices of disabled artists. The text of this song cycle will be poetry written by female, autistic, nonspeaking poets.
One of the poems featured in this song cycle is Hannah Emerson’s "I Live in the Woods of My Words.”
“I love the title of this poem,” Joyce shared. “It gives you a lot to think about, and the poem is filled with these incredibly beautiful phrases that are complex, yet simple, and do not have a necessarily singular meaning or interpretation.”
Joyce’s compositions reflect the tones and natural inflections of the phrases and words within the text she chooses. I cannot wait to hear how she interprets Emerson’s poetry and more in the concert this weekend.
I’ll see you in the audience.
More event details can be found here.
https://thejoltnews.com/stories/emerald-city-music-presents-an-evening-with-mikaela-bennett,28053