Photos: MUSIC FOR TRANSITIONS Album by inti figgis-vizueta on New Amsterdam Records

New Amsterdam Records has announced Music for Transitions, the first full-length album to exclusively feature works by inti figgis-vizueta, performed by Rothko String Quartet and GRAMMY Award-winning cellist Andrew Yee. The album is due November 06, 2026, and is available for pre-order.

Building from figgis-vizueta's 2020 cello quartet of the same name, described as 'raw, scraping yet soaring' by The Washington Post, the album's five pieces invoke Indigenous cosmologies and trans futurism through organic, ecstatic soundscapes. These compositions represent the latest heights of a catalogue in which figgis-vizueta creates, per composer George Lewis, 'a music of awareness, and you cannot be passive in listening to it.'

Four pieces on Music for Transitions feature the Germany-based Rothko String Quartet, whose members have championed figgis-vizueta's works for years, premiering numerous works as soloists, chamber musicians, and curators at various festivals across Germany. Cellist Andrew Yee, who has collaborated numerous times with figgis-vizueta as soloist and member of the Attacca Quartet, performs on two works as a duo with Rothko's cellist, Jakob Nierenz, and also with the complete Rothko, creating a cello quintet.

Music for Transitions mirrors figgis-vizueta's growth, exploration, and relationships spanning eight years of her time in New York City. She explains: 'This album is deeply connected to my life in New York City with its vibrant creative fabric and rich community of artistic collaborators. From early lessons at Columbia University, to commissions from The Juilliard School and Carnegie Hall, and performances in all five boroughs, New York City has been both a welcoming home and vivid, creative laboratory. Throughout, the string quartet has been much the same: an infinitely inspiring ensemble and musical form, with deep improvisational potential born of an intimate sensitivity to collective sound.'

'Music for Transitions (2020),' the album's titular work, is not a string quartet in the usual sense, but is indebted to an exponent of the form—Andrew Yee, for whom the piece was originally performed as part of National Sawdust's 'Digital Discovery.' The work comprises five layered cello tracks, which were created by both Yee and Jakob Nierenz, Rothko's cellist (and Yee's student years ago at Boston University Tanglewood Institute). A six-minute ecstatic tumult, the work foregrounds a technique in which Yee and Nierenz alternate rapidly between different strings, producing the work's bright motor. At the heart of Music for Transitions is joy in the self's intrinsic capacity for change, rooted in Yee and figgis-vizueta's shared experience as queer, trans-feminine artists.

Music For Transitions Live

November 7: Mighty Fortress at Old South Church, Boston, MA

December 2: The David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center at Pocantico, Tarrytown, NY

December 4: The Nimoy Theater (UCLA), Los Angeles CA

December 8: Liquid Music x Northrop at University of Minnesota, Minneapolis MN

December 10: Mansion at Strathmore, Bethesda MD

December 11: National Sawdust, Brooklyn NY

About inti figgis-vizueta

inti figgis-vizueta (b.1993) is a composer who works to reconcile historical aesthetics and experimental practices with trans & Indigenous futures. inti has been commissioned by leading artists and presenters including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, The Phillips Collection, Kronos Quartet, Attacca Quartet, Rothko String Quartet, and Roomful of Teeth, among many others.

inti is the recipient of the 2026 United States Artists Fellowship and her debut album Music for Transitions will be released on New Amsterdam Records in November 2026. inti's teachers and mentors include George Lewis, Marcos Balter, Tania León, and Nico Muhly. inti honors her Quichua bisabuela who was the only woman butcher on the plaza central and used to fight men with a machete.

About Rothko String Quartet

The Rothko String Quartet (RSQ), consisting of Marc Kopitzki (viola), Jakob Nierenz (violoncello), Joosten Ellée (violin), and William Overcash (violin), was founded in 2017 in Lüneburg. The two violinists specialized in the study of both early and contemporary music, giving the ensemble a high degree of flexibility in engaging with various styles of classical music and enabling diverse concert programs. Embodying this stylistic diversity, the RSQ considers it its mission to bring the music of marginalized composers to audiences and to shed light on lesser-known works from the history of classical music.

About Andrew Yee

Two time GRAMMY Award winning cellist and composer Andrew Yee (She/They) is a founding member of the Attacca Quartet whose recordings of the string quartets of Caroline Shaw; 'Orange' and 'Evergreen' have each won GRAMMY awards. They can also be heard on the score of the Alfonso Cuaron show 'Disclaimer' scored by Finneas O'Connell and on Billie Eilish's album 'Hit Me Hard and Soft'. As a composer she has written for film and television including Wu Tsang's 'Moby Dick', 'Love, Jamie' and two seasons of the BBC show 'We Might Regret This'.

About New Amsterdam

New Amsterdam is a Brooklyn-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit artist's service organization dedicated to supporting new music by composers and performers whose work transcends traditional and outdated genre distinctions. The label's artists have won numerous awards and accolades, including two Grammy Awards, seventeen Grammy nominations, and a Pulitzer Prize. New Amsterdam has also curated and presented more than 500 live concerts of groundbreaking new music. In recent years, the label embarked on a partnership with Nonesuch Records, supporting contemporary American composers in realizing ambitious creative projects.