Violist Nadia Sirota. Photo by Samantha West

What with the American Composers Forum and consistently innovative work of Studio Z and the array of classical/opera/jazz/new music hybrid compositions coming from the cities’ large companies and small outfits alike, it’s fine time to hear world-class new music around here. And with launch of Minneapolis Music Company (MMC), an interdisciplinary venture led by artistic director Mischa Santora (former associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra), horizons for the scene only look brighter.

MMC will make its debut Wednesday evening as part of (Knight Arts grantee) Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music series. For this first performance, the new company will feature an ensemble of ten versatile Twin Cities-based instrumentalists representing some of the region’s top talent in a range of genres, from new music and jazz to classical.

Mischa Santora, artistic director of the new Minneapolis Music Company. Photo by Leslie Plesser

The players will perform with genre-defying, New York City-based violist Nadia Sirota, who’s in town with Icelandic composer and conductor Daníel Bjarnason, to play a string orchestra version of “The Sleep Variations,” a viola concerto he composed especially for her.  The program also includes a new chamber orchestra arrangement of Bjarnason’s “Bow to String” and Judd Greenstein’s “The Night Gatherers,” as well as a few selections from Sirota’s new album, “Baroque.” Expect sounds by turns angular and languid – haunting melodic gestures offset by percussive stutters and precise, muscular whipsaws on the bow – rivers of impassioned sound.

Composer and conductor Daniel Bjarnason. Photo by Samantha West

SPCO’s Liquid Music series presents Daníel Bjarnason and Nadia Sirota, in performance with the Minneapolis Music Company, at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 6 at Amsterdam Bar and Hall, 6 W. 6th St., St. Paul. Tickets are $10. For more information, visit the website for Liquid Music.