Established on principles of community, artistic diversity, and stylistic freedom, New Amsterdam (NewAm) is a not-for-profit artist’s service organization dedicated to supporting the public’s engagement with new music by composers and performers whose work transcends traditional and outdated genre distinctions. New Amsterdam is focused on the development, dissemination, presentation, and promotion of new album-based projects that wholly fulfill the intent of their creators, resulting in music without walls, without an agenda, and without a central organizing principle. For our efforts, NewAm has been called “the focal point of the post-classical scene” by Time Out New York and “emblematic of an emerging generation” by The New York Times.

Founded in 2008 as a community-based cooperative record label, NewAm was granted 501(c)(3) status in 2011. The label has released more than one hundred records from artists including Arooj Aftab, Wild Up, Roomful of Teeth, Darcy James Argue, Missy Mazzoli, Jace Clayton, and more; its artists have won numerous awards and accolades, including three Grammy Awards, seventeen Grammy nominations, and a Pulitzer Prize. New Amsterdam has also curated and presented more than 500 live concerts of groundbreaking new music including world premieres, semi-staged operas, record releases, music festivals, and chamber music. Furthermore, in 2019 NewAm embarked on a new partnership with Nonesuch Records, seeing the release of approximately three albums per year to support contemporary American composers in realizing ambitious creative projects, with initial releases from composers William Brittelle, Caroline Shaw, and Daniel Wohl.

In all of our presenting and recording activities, NewAm holds firmly to its mission to support artists whose work lies outside of traditional music industry infrastructure - whether that be classical, pop/rock/indie, jazz, world, or experimental. In pursuit of this calling, NewAm often collaborates with like-minded organizations. Our past and ongoing partnerships with the River to River Festival, Ecstatic Music Festival, Art of Elan, the Indianapolis Symphony (multi-year residency), MoMA PS 1, Liquid Music, Galapagos Artspace and National Sawdust have yielded high-profile opportunities for our artists to present their work. On the records side, we often partner with other labels in order to offer our artists the best possible representation for their projects. Partner labels have included Bedroom Community (Iceland), Nonclassical (UK), One Little Indian (UK), Sono Luminus (USA), Cantaloupe (USA) and NNA Tapes (USA).