Uncommon Temperament began in 2009 in Manhattan as an ensemble dedicated to flagrantly daring programming, historically informed, yet wild and organic approach to Baroque performance practice, good fun, good music, and the sublime.
The focus is old music that sounds new, scordatura, programmatic music, chromatic music, ugly music, theatrical pieces, theatrical performances of non-theatrical pieces, noise, happenings, and fiery, risk-taking, beautiful music-making.
UT kicked off in 2009 with a sassily theatrical performance at NYC's (le) Poisson Rouge (an "accomplished and winning" performance, according to the New York Times), and the next few seasons included, among other things, a three tours, a traveling staged production of Bach's Coffee Cantata, a Christmas program, a killer birthday party for Telemann, music Rembrandt probably ignored at the Detroit Institute of Art, a “noise” charivari concert called “Love Gone Wrong,” Dutch Masters in a Dutch gallery, troubadour music at The Poetry Brothel, and a quirky, mostly-Biber program of Czech Baroque music.
In 2026 we’re preoccupied with community building, so we’ll have a series of READING PARTIES, and enter into COLLAB MODE!
PARTIES AND MINGLING AND BEER
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PARTIES AND MINGLING AND BEER 〰️
So, we’re going to have some music parties—they won’t be particularly chic but they WILL be silly and delightful and we’ll be adjusting them until they’re as fun as possible. SIGN UP TO BE ON THE LIST!
MUSICIANS
Sign up here so we can put you on the invite list! Bring your instrument, music Medieval-thru-present to read with friends, and something you like to drink! We will have some snacks.
VOYEURS
SO U JUST WANT TO WATCH, OK YES BE CREEPY WE LOVE IT! You have to bring at least a six pack of beer and donate $10 or more so we can keep things moving.
CURRENT PROJECTS
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Troubadour Fantasy Crusades Court: Cure 4 the male loneliness epidemic
Pillows, snacks, wine, pieces of armor lying around, a fool, a band of girls dressed as little lordlings playing an increasingly wild program filling in what we DON’T know about troubadour entertainment in the most outrageous ways. Surprises, dancing, virtuosity, juggling, one hour, leave drunk!
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Seance for Josquin
Beautiful and dark, candles, misery, regretz!
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Like A Virgin
Sacred music so dramatic it seems heretical. Sacred music that sounds like folk music. Lascivious music just barely saved from the gutter as a sacred contrafactum. Mary and Mary Magdalene break your heart in an all-too-sexy way.
WHO ARE WE?
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WHO ARE WE? 〰️
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Ariadne Greif, praised for her "luminous, expressive voice," "searing top notes," and "dusky depths," (NYTimes), enjoyed a casual child career as a “boy” soprano at the LA Opera, eventually making an adult debut singing Lutoslawski's Chantefleurs et Chantefables with the American Symphony Orchestra. She starred in operas ranging from Donizetti’s Elixir of Love with The Orlando Philharmonic, to Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias at the Aldeburgh Festival, and Atthis, by G.F. Haas, which the NY Times called "one of the most searingly painful and revealing operatic performances in recent times.”
Recent projects included performances with William Kentridge in the Oslo Opera House, The Luxembourg Philharmonic, Berkeley Cal Performances, and Performa in New York of the Dada masterpiece Ursonate, two projects of her own called Bird Party and Eleven Wild Geese commissioned by The Ultima Festival in Norway, a film of Table Manners, by Sheree Clement, and a film of We Need To Talk, a new monodrama by Caroline Shaw and Anne Carson for Opera Philadelphia. She sang concerts, recitals, and chamber music across the US, in Canada, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East with collaborators including JACK Quartet, PUBLIQuartet, Brooklyn Rider, The Orlando Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Gabe Kahane, Pekka Kuusisto, The Knights, including over three hundred concerts on tour with Ensemble Mélange. She sang at venues including The Ojai Festival, Zurich Tonhalle, Park Avenue Armory, Carnegie Hall, Sydney Chamber Opera, The Sarasota Opera House, Little Island, and The Meidän Festival in Helsinki.
Other recent highlights include Alyssa Weinberg’s monodrama Isola with Long Beach Opera, singing and dancing as Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls with Opera Saratoga, Nick Brooke’s Ten Transcendental Etudes at Mass MoCA, Doug Balliett’s The Fall of Rome with AMOC at Alice Tully Hall as part of Lincoln Center Summer Festival, and a series of concerts in North America, Europe, and Australia with Brooklyn Rider, performing Schoenberg String Quartet No. 2 and Colin Jacobsen’s Chalk and Soot. In 2025 she appears on a new album with Raven Chacon and Present Music, as well as Kate Soper’s The Romance of the Rose, released in 2024.
Ariadne has premiered upwards of thirty new operas and more than 150 new chamber works.
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Described as “versatile” and “dramatically convincing” (Voce di Meche) and praised for her “impassioned phrasing” (OperaWire), soprano Elizaveta Kozlova is an active performer and music entrepreneur who has been presented nationally and internationally.
She made her Lincoln Center debut as Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro with the New York Lyric Opera in 2018. Other operatic appearances include First Witch (Dido and Aeneas) with Prangins Baroque, Anna I (Seven Deadly Sins) and Servilia (La Clemenza di Tito) with Dell'Arte Opera, Doralice (Il trionfo dell'onore) with Amherst Early Music Festival, Gretel (Hänsel und Gretel) with Chicago Summer Opera, Pamina (Die Zauberflöte) with the Manhattan Opera Studio and Amore (L’incoronazione di Poppea) with the Berlin Opera Studio.
Elizaveta won an Encouragement Award at the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition twice: at the Los Angeles District in 2026 and at the Arkansas Region in 2024. In the same year, she was a finalist at the Concorso di Canto Barocco “Francesco Provenzale” in Napoli, Italy. She is the recipient of the Jaume Aragall Award and the Apròpera Award from the 2023 Camerata Sant Cugat Competition in Sant Cugat, Spain. She was a semifinalist at the Houston Saengerbund Competition in 2021.
Elizaveta is actively involved in New York City's early music scene. She has performed with such ensembles and organizations as Bach Vespers, Juilliard415, Parthenia Viol Consort and Tenet Vocal Artists (as part of the Tenet Mentorship Program). In 2025, Elizaveta joined Instituto Cervantes as a curator of a concert series dedicated to the Baroque music of Spain and the Americas.
Elizaveta is an avid interpreter of new music. She collaborated with Carnegie Hall on a performance of Into Air by Alex Mills presented at the Montres Breguet lounge at Frieze New York art fair.
In 2025, Elizaveta joined Parthenia Viol Consort in a recital fully dedicated to new music for viols, which included three world premieres. At the New Music New Haven concert series at the Yale School of Music, Elizaveta sang the world premieres of two pieces for solo voice and orchestra: Five Madrigals by Arseniy Gusev and Butterfly Hunt by Kacper Madejek. Elizaveta frequently performs songs and chamber music by Valentin Silvestrov at concerts dedicated to fundraising for Ukraine.
Elizaveta Kozlova has performed at several events of major humanitarian significance. Most notably, at the Center for Jewish History event “A Tribute to the Artists who Perished in the Holocaust”. She was also a part of the United Nations 75 Years Celebration Music Festival for Sustainable Development Goals in 2020.
Elizaveta is based in NYC where she received her Bachelor's and Master's Degrees at Mannes School of Music.
BELOVED ADVISORS, PAST PERFORMERS, COLLABS
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BELOVED ADVISORS, PAST PERFORMERS, COLLABS 〰️
Liv Heym - James Waldo - Synead - Anaïs Maviel - Caroline Nicolas - Anna Hiemstra - Raphael Fusco - Ryan Walsh - Sasha Gee Enegren - Anneke Schaul-Yoder - David Himmelheber - Ricardo Rivera - Rheagan Osteen - Beiliang Zhu - Rose Hashimoto - YOU?
MEDIA
MEDIA
J’ay un oiseau qui vole - Jacques Mangeant
Performed by Ariadne Greif and the voice of Alma Jourdois-Wittenberg
From BIRD PARTY by Ariadne Greif
O rubor sanguinis - Hildegard von Bingen
Performed by Elizaveta Kozlova
