Millenium Rift
October 20, 2026 @ 7:30pm
Arrow Street Arts, Cambridge, MA
A preview of the new nostalgia-soaked '80s-influenced multimedia song cycle composed by William Brittelle for Roomful of Teeth. Millennium Rift expands on Roomful of Teeth's Grammy®-winning album Rough Magic (2023), which garnered Brittelle a Grammy® award for production and Grammy® nomination for composition. This special presentation will feature world premiere music, new conceptual video material by filmmaker Isaac Gale, additional QR-codeable content, including multiple volumes of hypertext poetry and an entire alternate world wiki system, and members of Metropolis Ensemble.
Scored for studio-styled vocals, reverb-drenched sax, Phil Collins-era drum fills, vintage synths, and chorused electric guitar, Millennium Rift tells the story of the fictional composer and poet mailer_daemon, a digital recluse active in the last two decades of the 20th century. Convinced of global cataclysm in Y2K, he secludes himself in the Mojave Desert, where he devotes the last decade of his life to developing a magnum opus, Millennium Rift - a maniacal swirl of musical influences and esoteric reference points outlining a cathartically emotional story of isolation and bittersweet redemption.
This project is generously supported by Ann Merrifield and Wayne Davis, as well as Dr. Andrew S. Plump and Dr. Suzanne D. Plump.
About The Artists
Roomful of Teeth
Erik Hall is a musician and composer in Michigan. He is best known for his multi-instrumental solo recordings and live performances of contemporary classical works, which have been featured by The Wire, Pitchfork, Bandcamp Daily, WNYC New Sounds, and The New York Times. His 2020 re-creation of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians won the Libera Award for Best Classical Record, and his 2023 interpretation of Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato followed with a nomination in the same category. Erik has composed or arranged music for Chicago’s GRAMMY-winning Third Coast Percussion, NYC’s GRAMMY-nominated Metropolis Ensemble and Sandbox Percussion, and for feature films The Night Clerk and The Mountain. He has recorded and toured with NOMO, Wild Belle, His Name Is Alive, In Tall Buildings, and Lean Year, appearing at Lollapalooza, Coachella, Pitchfork Music Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, CONAN, and The Tonight Show.
William Britelle
William Brittelle (he/him) is a Brooklyn-based Grammy-winning producer, Grammy-nominated composer, and a creator of hyper-text and multimedia. An avid collaborator, Brittelle has worked with a number of artists across multiple disciplines, including Roomful of Teeth, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Bryce Dessner (The National), Son Lux, Oneohtrix Point Never, A Far Cry, Lower Dens, Duran Duran, Wye Oak, Dirty Projectors, Kanye West, the Philadelphia Opera, and the Seattle, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Alabama, Grand Rapids and North Carolina Symphony Orchestras, the Basel Sinfonietta, the Nu Deco Ensemble, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His most recent full-length LP entitled Spiritual America featuring Wye Oak, the Metropolis Ensemble, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, was released by Nonesuch/New Amsterdam in 2019. Prior releases were profiled on NPR's All Things Considered and in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, MUSO, The Nation, and The New Yorker.
Isaac Gale
Isaac Gale is a filmmaker, visual artist, and musician from Minneapolis. He has directed numerous documentaries, experimental films, and music videos for artists like Bon Iver, Lambchop, Poliça, Joe Rainey Sr., Colin Stetson, CJ Camerieri, Dizzy Fae, Third Eye Blind, Lizzo, and Swamp Dogg. His work has been featured by the New York Times, Vice, Pitchfork, Interview, Rolling Stone, Spin, Aperture Foundation, and NPR, and has been exhibited in galleries and film festivals across the globe. In 2017, he was a McKnight Media Artist Fellow. In 2021, he collaborated with composer William Brittelle on Eternal September Volume 1, a feature-length experimental music film, commissioned and presented by Liquid Music, the Walker Art Center, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, Gale’s first documentary feature film, was released theatrically and distributed by Magnolia Pictures in 2025.
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.
