Citizen Contributions | Music | Arts & Culture | New Haven Symphony Orchestra
Photo courtesy of the Yale Schwarzman Center.
The following citizen contribution comes from Clara Cortright and the team at Big Voice Communications.
Do you ever feel like you’re drifting through the city, your only companion the music pulsing
through your headphones?
What if that private soundtrack wasn’t isolating, but connecting you to strangers, to history, to a community all listening with you?
That’s the vision behind Huang Ruo's City of Floating Sounds, an immersive, citywide musical experience hosted by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra (NHSO) in collaboration with the Yale Schwarzman Center and the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. This Saturday, New Haven will come alive not just with sound, but with movement, memory, and connection.
As it's designed, City of Floating Sounds is meant to feel not just a concert—it’s an exploration of what art can be. With smartphones as instruments and sidewalks as stages, it reimagines how we listen, how we move, and how we connect.
“You get to see your city in a new way,” said Jennifer Newman, associate artistic director of the Yale Schwarzman Center. “It’s about breaking out of your everyday routine—taking paths you don’t usually take, meeting people you’ve never met before, and listening to something much bigger than yourself.”
Participants begin their journey at one of six starting points, all mapped throughout various New Haven neighborhoods—from the vibrant corridors with cultural relevance near Union Station to the historic sites near Dixwell and Woolsey Hall. As walkers make their journey downtown, they will hear fragments of composer Huang Ruo’s original symphony streamed from a mobile app.
Walking without headphones, the closer participants get to one another, the richer and fuller the sound becomes, creating a collective, living musical experience.
“This isn’t just about the music,” said Newman. “It’s about shifting from the task-rabbit part of your brain into the poetic part. It’s about connection—seeing your city and the people in it differently.”
As walkers reach the end of their journey, they will find a live orchestral performance at New
Haven Green at 7 p.m., where the New Haven Symphony Orchestra—under the baton of
conductor Perry So—will perform the complete City of Floating Sounds with composer Huang
Ruo in attendance.
“He did it at last year's festival and he’s done it again," said Elaine Carroll, CEO of the NHSO, of So. "He has created this free concert that celebrates New Haven’s rich history and culture, and each piece played pays tribute to each of New Haven’s neighborhoods.”
The evening holds a second, equally powerful note: remembrance. The concert will honor Helen Hagan, the first Black woman to graduate from the Yale School of Music in 1912, who composed and performed her own Piano Concerto in C Minor with the NHSO just years later. Thanks to painstaking reconstruction efforts, one of Hagan’s historic works will be performed that night by acclaimed pianist and musicologist Samantha Ege.
“Her legacy is being brought back to life,” said Newman. “This performance is both a
celebration and a restoration.”
Carroll also announced that the Yale Music and Schools Initiative will provide a special
highlight for the concert’s final piece—six students from the program will join the symphony in performance.
The experience is free and open to the public, though reservations are encouraged for the
walking tour segments. The mobile app, launching two days before the event, will guide
walkers along their chosen paths and synchronize the musical journey.