Sarah Kirkland Snider’s fifth full-length LP, a new, all-orchestral album titled Forward Into Light, produced by multi-GRAMMY-winning producer Silas Brown and recorded by GRAMMY-nominated Metropolis Ensemble led by artistic director/conductor Andrew Cyr, will be co-released by Nonesuch Records and the label that Snider co-founded, New Amsterdam Records, on February 27, 2026.
The new album features four of Snider’s orchestral works: Forward Into Light, a commission for the New York Philharmonic inspired by the American women’s suffrage movement; the string orchestra and harp (Noël Wan) version of Drink the Wild Ayre, a reimagining of the string quartet Snider wrote for the Emerson String Quartet as the ensemble’s final commission; Eye of Mnemosyne, a multimedia orchestral work on memory, innovation, and culture as refracted through the lens of photography, commissioned by the Rochester Philharmonic; and Something for the Dark, a meditation on resilience, commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra after Snider won its Lebenbom Competition in 2014. Two singles from the album arrive with announce and pre-order – the title track, Forward Into Light, and “Of Rise and Renewal” from Something for the Dark.
Snider, deemed “one of new music’s leading names” (Gramophone), writes music of direct expression and dramatic narrative that has been hailed as “rapturous” (New York Times), “groundbreaking” (Boston Globe), and “ravishingly beautiful” (NPR). With an attention to detail that is “as intricate and exquisite as a spider’s web” (BBC Music Magazine), her music synthesizes diverse influences to render a nuanced command of immersive storytelling.
“I chose to create an album of these four works because they share themes of perseverance, alliance, and evolution through dark and light – concepts that have been at the forefront of my mind in recent years,” Sarah Kirkland Snider says. “Beyond that, there are musical connections: three of the works feature certain motivic ideas that have haunted me over the past few years, appearing in different guises across projects.”
