Two New Works by Gabriela Ortiz to Premiere at The Met in Celebration of the Art of the Ancient Americas Galleries
The event, titled Singing Stones: Celebrating the Ancient Americas, will take place at 7 p.m. in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium.
On Friday, November 7, 2025, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will celebrate the reopening of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing’s Art of the Ancient Americas galleries with a special evening of music honoring the region’s cultural legacy. The event, titled Singing Stones: Celebrating the Ancient Americas, will take place at 7 p.m. in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium and will feature the world premieres of two newly commissioned works by acclaimed Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz.
Ortiz, whose honors include a Grammy Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and Mexico’s National Prize for Arts and Literature, will debut Canta la Piedra—Tetluikan and Kauyumari. The evening opens with Roomful of Teeth, the Grammy-winning vocal ensemble, performing Canta la Piedra—Tetluikan, commissioned by The Met to mark the reopening of the Rockefeller Wing. Based on poems by Mardonio Carballo, the work explores Mesoamerican ideas of interconnectedness between humanity and nature.
Following this, Coro Acardenchado, a Mexican folk ensemble appearing in partnership with the Mexico Now Festival, will present traditional canto cardenche—a rare and emotionally charged form of Mexican folk singing that expresses collective pain and resilience.
The program concludes with the two ensembles joining forces for the premiere of a new double-choir arrangement of Kauyumari, Ortiz’s rhythmic meditation on music as a vehicle for healing and transformation. The performance will also feature live, hand-drawn animations by Arturo López Pío and video projections of the Wirikuta desert by Mercedes Aquí and Paola Stefani, offering a multisensory reflection on the living traditions of the ancient Americas.
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