Samanea New York signs lease with “Distanced Together”

Westbury, NY Samanea New York located at 1500 Old Country Rd., has signed a six-month lease with “Distanced Together” an immersive musical experience featuring a virtual ensemble of 60 ‘musicians’ that takes audiences on a guided mediative experience. Guests of this limited engagement, originally developed to help people process the emotional trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic, will make their way around and through 60 individual speakers arranged in a large circle, experiencing the music just as we experienced the pandemic: individually, with our own perspective.

Distanced Together will occupy approximately 6,000 s/f on the property’s second floor. Matthew Kucker, Jordan Baruch, and Herbert Agin at Colliers represented the landlord in the deal.

“Samanea New York is proud to bring this extremely unique experience to Long Island,” said Dominic Coluccio, director of real estate at Samanea New York. “We have all likely felt the healing powers of music at some point in our lives and hope this exhibit can provide a reflective comforting space to our guests. This limited engagement will join our already robust entertainment tenant roster including X-Golf, Gravity Vault, Empire Adventure Park, and Ryco’s Escape Room, further establishing Samanea as the region’s newest entertainment and lifestyle destination.”

Composer Murray Hidary penned the orchestration during the COVID-19 lockdown. Distanced Together had its world premiere in January 2023 at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) with a live performance of 60 string musicians. More than 3,000 audience members attended the live performances to experience Hidary’s revolutionary composition from their own perspectives.

For the traveling exhibit, the orchestra will be projected onto a screen and the music heard through 60 speakers placed throughout the room that take the place of each musician, each playing its own specific part of Hidary’s composition. Guests will walk through the exhibit experiencing the music individually in a communal space for reflection and healing.  

Tickets for Distanced Together are $25 for adults and $15 for kids 12 and under (3 and under admitted free) and are available to purchase here. Admission to the experience also includes MindTravel music and guided meditations before and after the experience. Distanced Together will also have art prints for sale, based on the music performed available for purchase.  

“Distanced Together is about creating a very intimate space for reflection and catharsis so that whatever our guests are pushing under the surface, they have an opportunity to bring it forward, address it, and truly put it behind them,” said Hidary. “One of the places people turn for answers is the arts, which can provide such solace. Especially music.”

Hidary is a composer who has built his career using music as a social emotional support tool. In 2014, he created MindTravel, a music experience company that hosts events in which people move through a beautiful landscape and listen to his improvisational music. MindTravel has since taken thousands of people on musical journeys across the globe. ??

Samanea New York tenants currently open to the public include Bloomingdale’s Furniture Outlet, Dave & Buster’s, The Cheesecake Factory, Fortunoff Backyard Store, 99 Ranch Market, X-Golf, Let’s Craft, Snapology and XP League, Smash-It Pickleball, Smash-It Therapy, Leon Banilivi Rugs, Kawai Piano Outlet, Leonardo Furniture, MyPlanet Living Center, and K-POT & Korean BBQ.