National Sawdust opened in October 2015, and behind its brick facade in Brooklyn a promising venue for new music was unveiled, overseen by composers, creators and visionaries. Splotched in haphazard polygons and neon tubes, the modest space offers an intimate environment for a new generation of artists to showcase their work. The venue's name comes from the sawdust factory that once occupied the century-old building at 80 North 6th street, and which its governing non-profit organisation raised over $16 million to bring to life. The building was designed by Bureau V architects and the acoustic consultants from Arup, who made some critical decisions, such as placing the building on over 1,000 metal springs to absorb the shock from the subway trains running nearby. Advised by a board whose members include Philip Glass, Renée Fleming and Laurie Anderson, composer and entrepreneur Paola Prestini helms the organisation.

On 4 December 2015, in one of the first events to christen the space, curator and violinist Miranda Cuckson, whose repertoire is vast and rich in living composers, joined Yarn/Wire – a wittily named ensemble consisting of pianists Laura Barger and Ning Yu, and percussionists Ian Antonio and Russell Greenberg – for world premieres by George Lewis and Chiyoko Szlavnics. Each piece approached the idea of homogenising timbre through distinct methods: Lewis interlaced instrumental colours across the ensemble through various techniques of tone production to emphasise the similarities in sound generation, whereas Szlavnics narrowed the range of tone production to blend the ensemble in sonic uniformity.

Trombone improviser and computer-music composer, George Lewis has spent a large portion of his career understanding what real-time activity means through an investigation into improvisation, and his compositions often uncover new ways of understanding music as a form of communication. Lewis's Into the Breach explores the imitative possibilities between the violin's timbre and bowed metallic percussion, scraped piano strings and plucked wires, expounding the idea through a series of episodes in which the solo violin enters into unison partnerships with elements of the surrounding accompaniment, not only in terms of pitch but also quality, intensity and resonance. Cuckson emulsified her harmonics with the glockenspiel's stratospheric pings; Barger and Yu moved industriously from keys to twisted-steel guts, scraping wires with coffee mugs and plastic Rite Aid pharmacy cards; Antonio and Greenberg sanded and brushed their crotales and vibraslaps to match roughly swept violin bow strokes. In search of the perfect amalgamation, Lewis did not, however, ignore the advantages of contrast; after all, the title itself implies a rupture of some kind. In one effective instance, a rubber mallet was raked across the Mylar membrane of a tenor drum. Idiosyncratic sounds such as these momentarily added unexpected and fascinating elements to the score. By the end of the piece, the violin was exorcised from its role as a melody-maker and instead transformed into a primordial, metallic noise machine. Cuckson executed the virtuosic score like a diligently programmed cyborg, unscathed by the demands of Lewis's often swift and precise finger-work.

If the title of Szlavnics's work, Mind is moving … , is to be understood in any programmatic sense, the overall aural stasis of the composition can be interpreted as a mind stunted by apathy. In addition to producing compositions that stray into the territory of visual art, Szlavnics harnesses mathematical sinusoids in her works to achieve a sort of power-vibrato ‘beating’ effect. Mind is moving … , scored for two percussion, two pianos, electric keyboard and sinewaves, is divided roughly into five sections that vary little in terms of their audible material, because much of the potential for conflicting intensities or temporal variation is constricted. While much of the composition integrated the use of sine waves, the final section of the piece contained a definitive use of an oscillating device inside the vibraphones which wobbled the pitch frequency to create a steady and controlled ripple of sound. The search for homogeneous sound required precise control from the musicians in order to allow no particular accentuation in the unilateral flow of sound, and the members of Yarn/Wire demonstrated their restrained discipline. Since the composition relies heavily on the acoustics of a room to make full use of the oscillating device in the vibraphones, it might be more effective as a sound installation piece, allowing the audience to explore the space in which Szlavnics's music resides.

Cuckson and Yarn/Wire set a high level of expectation for future performances at National Sawdust. The venue, still in the planning stages of what's to come for the remainder of this inaugural season, has the potential to make several last-minute surprises to their unfilled calendar. With a clear vision and an abundance of creative thinkers on its side, it is safe to say National Sawdust will build an attractive reputation in the next decade, defining not only its own character but that of the artists who justify its existence.