“Gates” presents the Riot Ensemble at the peak of contemporary ensemble performance. The album brings together works by Eric Skytterholm Egan, Eden Lonsdale, Kaija Saariaho, and Bernhard Gander, exploring the tension between order and chaos, structure and excess, historical reference and radical present.
Riot Ensemble, one of the world’s leading contemporary music ensembles, is renowned for its precision, stylistic versatility, and close collaboration with living composers. Several of the works on “Gates” were created in direct dialogue with the ensemble or premiered by them.

At the center is Egan’s “Privacy of Mind” (2013), inspired by Flann O’Brien’s proto-postmodern novel At Swim-Two-Birds. Physical gestures, percussive textures, and delicate Baroque references balance on the edge between stability and collapse. Eden Lonsdale’s “Tears and Oceans” (2022) unfolds in three parts, conjuring a ritual intensity where historical traces from Monteverdi to 12th-century organum resonate timelessly.

Kaija Saariaho’s “Gates” from her ballet “MAA” opens a space of fluid transitions, transforming Baroque sonata models into overlapping timbral clouds. In contrast, Bernhard Gander’s “ö” (2005) channels raw, physical energy inspired by rock, yet retains a structural link to Baroque principles of excess.
“Gates” is an album of thresholds: between past and present, ritual and corporeality, control and collapse. The Riot Ensemble renders these tensions audible with a blend of analytical clarity and visceral immediacy.