Solstice: Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Music for Sunrise and Sunset
June 21, 2026
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Sunrise
Welcome the longest day of the year with a luminous sunrise performance. Brooklyn Botanic Garden presents Metropolis Ensemble performing Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons featuring violinist Francisco Fullana—a stunning reimagining of Vivaldi’s response to the natural world.
Sunset
Settle in to sunset with Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons for string orchestra and solo violin, featuring violinist Francisco Fullana paired with composer and multi-instrumentalist Emily Wells, who fuses voice, violin, and electronics into something raw and urgent. Three centuries, three artists—Vivaldi, Richter, Wells—each turning toward nature: fragile, cyclical, powerfully alive.
About The Artists
Francisco Fullana
Francisco Fullana, winner of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, has been hailed as an "amazing talent" by Gustavo Dudamel. A native of Mallorca, he has performed as soloist with ensembles ranging from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to the baroque ensemble Apollo's Fire to Metropolis Ensemble.
His recordings have topped the Billboard Classical charts and earned Album of the Month honors from both Apple Music and BBC Music Magazine. A graduate of the Royal Conservatory of Madrid and the Juilliard School, Francisco performs on the 1735 "Mary Portman" ex-Kreisler Guarneri del Gesù violin, on loan through the Stradivari Society of Chicago.
Emily Wells
Forging a bridge between pop and chamber music, composer, producer, and video artist Emily Wells builds songs from deliberate strata of vocals, synths, drums, piano, other string, and wind instruments. Her evocative music (described as “visionary” by NPR) and performances (called “quietly transfixing” by the New York Times) impel listeners to be attuned.
Wells’s latest release, the ten-song album Regards to the End, explores the AIDS crisis, climate change, and her lived experience watching the world burn. A work of radical empathy, Regards to the End foregrounds the power of art, critique, and care to connect and perhaps redeem us.
Metropolis Ensemble
GRAMMY-nominated Metropolis Ensemble, founded by conductor Andrew Cyr in 2006, has commissioned more than 450 new works over two decades — including a JUNO Award winner for Best Classical Composition. The ensemble moves fluidly between worlds: Lincoln Center and the Hollywood Bowl, Brooklyn Steel and Music Hall of Williamsburg, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and New Victory Theatre, COSM's immersive domes in Los Angeles and Dallas, Celebrate Brooklyn, Sounds from a Safe Harbour, and Eaux Claires Hiver. The ensemble's Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia — a collaboration with Cambodian artists addressing the Khmer Rouge genocide — premiered at BAM's Next Wave and toured internationally to Paris, Melbourne, Montreal, Boston, Taiwan, and Phnom Penh. Recent recognition includes Timo Andres' The Blind Banister, recorded by Metropolis Ensemble, which received a 2025 GRAMMY nomination for Best Engineered Album, Classical — as well as a New York Times Best of 2025 citation for the opera In a Grove at the PROTOTYPE Festival.
The ensemble's recordings span Nonesuch, New Amsterdam, Merge, Naxos, and Def Jam. Metropolis's ongoing collaboration with Brooklyn Botanic Garden includes their annual Biophony Solstice concerts, where the ensemble first performed Canto Ostinato with Erik Hall and Sandbox Percussion for over 3,000 audience members at sunrise and sunset.
Max Richter
Max Richter is one of the most influential composers of his generation, fusing classical technique and electronic technology across genre-defining solo albums and countless scores for film, dance, and art.
His ambitious projects include the landmark nine-hour album Sleep, the reimagining of Vivaldi's violin concertos in Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, and his score for Wayne McGregor's ballet Woolf Works, alongside acclaimed records tackling human rights, migration, and the post-war world. His music has won him legions of fans worldwide and blazed a trail for a generation of musicians.
Andrew Cyr
GRAMMY-nominated conductor Andrew Cyr is a leader in the rapidly growing contemporary music scene. His enthusiasm for connecting the outstanding musicians and composers of the new generation to today's audiences led him to create Metropolis Ensemble in 2006.
Through passionate performances, innovative programming, the fostering, commissioning, and advocacy of emerging composers and performers, and leading a wide variety of community engagement and education initiatives, Cyr displays the scope and potential of today's freshest voices in composition and performance to attract and inspire new and diverse audiences.
Earl Lee
Earl Lee has emerged as one of the most compelling and versatile artists of his generation. He has led many of North America’s foremost orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. In August 2025, Lee stepped in on short notice to replace Zubin Mehta in the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at Tanglewood, where The Boston Globe praised his interpretation as “an unhurried, momentous ritual … the finale nothing short of spectacular.”
In the 2025–26 season, Lee’s engagements include return appearances with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as debuts with the Korean National Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a special project with the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).
As Music Director of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, Lee has revitalized the ensemble’s artistic vision with programming that bridges tradition and innovation. His leadership blends a deep respect for the symphonic canon with a curiosity for new and diverse forms of expression, bringing a fresh sense of energy and purpose to the orchestra’s seasons. Under his direction, the Ann Arbor Symphony has presented bold repertoire alongside genre-crossing collaborations with artists such as Jacob Collier and Chris Thile, broadening the ensemble’s reach and musical scope. Beyond Ann Arbor, Lee has worked closely with composers Unsuk Chin, Tod Machover, Donghoon Shin, Katherine Balch, and Carlos Simon, leading numerous world premieres and championing works that expand the expressive possibilities of today’s orchestra.
Lee has been mentored by Andris Nelsons, Manfred Honeck, Hugh Wolff, Peter Oundjian, Kurt Masur, and Bernard Haitink. At Masur’s invitation, he studied privately with him in Leipzig, focusing on the life and music of Felix Mendelssohn — an experience that profoundly shaped his artistic identity.
A former cellist trained at the Curtis Institute of Music, The Juilliard School, and the Marlboro Music Festival, Lee brings a chamber musician’s sense of communication, listening, and shared purpose to every performance, seeking to create music that is both unified and deeply expressive.
JK Kim
Jongkuk Kim is an award-winning Billboard nominated drummer, improviser, composer, and electronic musician from Incheon, Korea who has become an integral voice in the contemporary jazz and improvised music scene in his home city and a rising star in the worldwide jazz community. He is undoubtedly one of very few jazz drummers in recent years who has been recognized so highly on the international jazz scene. He has distinguished himself as one of the leading voices of his generation and is now one of the most sought-after jazz drummers in the world today with his name appearing in major publications such as Billboard, Grammy and Vogue magazines.
