inti figgis-vizueta: Music for Transitions at Northrop

Embark upon an “arresting … sparse, beautiful” (NPR Classical) sensory journey through form and identity in this Liquid Music | Northrop Series performance. Composer inti figgis-vizueta presents her 2026 debut record “Music for Transitions” with an evening communing the virtuosity of Grammy Award-winning cellist Andrew Yee; the hypnotic luminosity of Germany-based Rothko String Quartet (RSQ) in their Minnesota debut; and the radiant mastery of organist Aaron David Miller on the historic Northrop pipe organ. 

This moving, genre-dissolving program opens with “wayra” (wind), a work originally commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, performed by Miller and demonstrating the improvisational flexibility of the Aeolian-Skinner organ. “Music for Transitions,” which will be performed in full at this concert, includes several compositions for Yee and Rothko String Quartet and explores Indigenous heritage and trans identity through organic, ecstatic soundscapes. The  title track, originally written for four cellos, premiered in 2020 multitracked entirely by Yee. Recurring themes of land, wind, rivers and cosmology are framed by constant musical transformation throughout. 

An “ever-intriguing, rising new music star” (LA Times), whose work brings “a sense of true dramatic stakes” (The New York Times), composer inti figgis-vizueta crafts magically real music through the lens of personal identity. Her compositions braid together a childhood in the immigrant communities and Black-founded Freedom Schools of Washington, D.C. with her direct Andean and Irish heritage, weaving complex historical aesthetics with trans and Indigenous futures. 

Top image: Andrew Yee, inti figgis-vizueta and Rothko String Quartet at PODIUM Festival Esslingen. Photo by Diana Lim.