Principal Players From New York, Seattle and Baltimore Join a Synth Player on Fourteen Pieces
Horn, cello, viola and synthesizers meet across the fourteen pieces of the cardboard falcon, a spacious album of what its makers call ambient chamber music. It comes from Mico Nonet, a five-piece in which four players hold, or have held, principal chairs in major orchestras.
Mico Nonet’s the cardboard falcon sits in our Instrumental, Leftfield, Cinematic playlist below, and the quintet’s coverage across the network is gathered on Mico Nonet’s artist profile. The album reached GetMusic.News through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Put it on, then read on for the people behind it.
The Cardboard Falcon Is for Film Score Fans and Concert Regulars Who Have Never Tried Ambient Music
First, start with the concert hall. Efe Baltacigil is the principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony, having previously served as associate principal cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Similarly, Katherine Needleman is the principal oboist of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. In addition, David Cooper is principal horn of the New York Philharmonic, and Cooper has held the same chair in Berlin, Dallas and Chicago.
Carrie Dennis plays viola with the Phoenix Symphony and previously held principal posts in Berlin, Los Angeles and Sydney. The fifth member, Joshua Lee Kramer, plays the synthesizers and also produced the record. Before Mico Nonet, Kramer played in the rock band Matt Pond PA.
So anyone who knows these orchestras from a seat in the stalls gets something unusual here. These are the same players, heard away from the symphony repertoire. Moreover, eleven of the fourteen pieces last under four minutes, so the album is easy to sample a track at a time.
The titles also show a playful streak. For example, there is squirrel shaped shrubbery, iridescent sludge bubbles and pistachio macrochip, alongside twigs and acorns and stringless kite. Finally, the closing piece is called pixelated lightbox, which recalls the mosaic pixelating lightbox Kramer built to make the album’s videos.
Where Fans of Jóhann Jóhannsson and Hildur Guðnadóttir Come In
Listeners who found this kind of music through film scores also have two useful signposts. Jóhann Jóhannsson built his career on blending traditional orchestration with electronics, from Sicario to Arrival. In fact, his second album, Virðulegu Forsetar, was an hour-long ambient piece for eleven brass players, bells and electronics. Mico Nonet works on a far smaller scale, but the idea of pairing a horn with electronic sound is the same.
Hildur Guðnadóttir is a classically trained cellist, and her score for Joker won the Academy Award. Her music for Chernobyl also won an Emmy and a Grammy. Likewise, Mico Nonet offers a similar meeting point, with Baltacigil’s cello working alongside Kramer’s synthesizers.
Radio Hosts From KEXP to NTS Gave The Cardboard Falcon Its First Listeners in May 2026
The album arrived on streaming services on 7 May 2026, with a vinyl edition to follow. Soon, ambient radio had picked it up. On 10 May, KEXP’s Pacific Notions programmed music from it, and then NTS’s Astral Gardens with Nailah Hunter followed the next day. Meanwhile, WXPN’s Star’s End played elastic seesaw on 10 May and stringless kite a week later.
The run then continued through the spring. dublab’s Between Two Points with Richard Chartier played perilous driftwood on 20 May, and NTS’s Don’t Trip played the title track on 29 May. Then, in late June, the Machines of Loving Grace show with Midwife on NTS played the whole album. It also played tracks from the band’s 2007 record, The Marmalade Balloon.
The videos have travelled further still. The title track’s film arrived on 9 June, followed by casimir in late July and snowglobe reef in mid-September. By late October, the casimir video had passed 47,000 views on YouTube, and snowglobe reef had passed 36,000.
The Community Around Mico Nonet, From Concert Stages to Ambient Radio
Some of that support goes back a long way. Chuck van Zyl reviewed The Marmalade Balloon for Star’s End in December 2007. The review praised how much space the four players gave each other, and gave silence too. Then, in May 2026, eighteen years on, the same show played two pieces from the new album within a fortnight of release.
Several of those hosts also make music themselves. Nailah Hunter is a Los Angeles composer, and Richard Chartier is a sound artist who has run the label LINE since 2000. Midwife, meanwhile, is the recording name of the musician Madeline Johnston.
For a first listen, start with casimir, the opening track, and watch its video alongside it. After that, give the title track its full five and a half minutes, since it is the longest piece on the record.
GetMusic.News’s curator team:
“Ambient music is often made by one person at a desk full of equipment. The Cardboard Falcon is the work of five players, four of them orchestral principals, and that gives a genre built on stillness an unusual kind of precision.”
Follow Mico Nonet on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and their YouTube channel. You can also stream their music on Spotify and Apple Music.
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