Polyphonic Interlace (Excerpt)

Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Raquel Acevedo Klein is an active conductor, vocalist, composer, and instrumentalist. Raquel has performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, Town Hall, BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Celebrate Brooklyn!, the Guggenheim, Rockefeller Center, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, WNYC, National Sawdust, Bard Fisher Center and elsewhere.

Raquel conducts for the Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Beth Morrison Projects and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra among other projects. She has premiered works and operas by Philip Glass, Caroline Shaw, John Adams, Nico Muhly, Paola Prestini, Bryce Dessner, and George Lewis to name a few. She has recorded and performed with artists including Glen Hansard, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, The National, Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, and NY Philharmonic among others. In 2020, she collaborated with Grammy Award-winning pianist Cory Smythe on a new album entitled "Accelerate Every Voice," where she recorded microtonal vocals intertwined with Smythe's microtonally-treated piano.

Raquel's performances and curations have caught the attention of publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, and Time Out New York. As part of NY PopsUp, Raquel curated a four-week festival entitled NYC FREE, to celebrate the opening of Little Island in 2021. To bring audiences back together through music, Raquel premiered an original, audience-interactive vocal symphony made entirely of her voice in 40 parts, supported with electronic instrumentation. The audience played different parts of the music via their phones, using the Polyphonic Interlace smartphone app as a web-based instrument.