or, The Whale with Andrew Yee and Caroline Shaw
Caroline Shaw and Andrew Yee will perform works that reflect both a musical partnership and a deep friendship, featuring music from their new album, Or, The Whale, as well as re-contextualised works by other composers. Long‑time friends and collaborators, the duo share a musical language rooted in curiosity, playfulness and emotional clarity, moving effortlessly between classical writing, traditional music and reimagined sound worlds. Come and hear two artists working together at the height of their creative powers.
Photo: Anja Schüts
Trans Requiem
Andrew Yee’s Trans Requiem, a groundbreaking, first-of-its-kind work for trans voices, choirs, and orchestra, commissioned by Trinity Church NYC. Amplifying the beauty, strength, and diversity of the trans experience, Yee’s powerful writing and deeply personal expression is a stirring testament to the authenticity and dignity of every voice. Before the requiem, the audience is immersed in Samuel Barber’s stunning Agnus Dei /Adagio for Strings and Pauline Oliveros’s A World Wide Tuning Meditation, a work that brings everyone in the church space together in a shared act of listening, presence and collective compassion.
A Love Letter to the Queer Community
This project features five 10-minute works from emerging QTPOC (Queer & Trans People of Color) composers who are students or alumni of Oberlin College & Conservatory. Entirely commissioned by the Poiesis Quartet, this impact-driven program aims to expand the string quartet canon with the artistic stories of diverse artists, centering the vast knowledge and approaches to music-making by the intersection of QTPOC that are too often unheard. According to the Institute for Composer Diversity’s 2024 Orchestra Repertoire Report, works by living Women and Nonbinary composers of color are only programmed 4.1% of the time. As such, this project presents an important opportunity for artists and audiences everywhere to challenge norms in classical music, and experience vibrant, engaging, and beautiful music from non-traditional perspectives.
Note to a Friend | Attacca Quartet & Theo Bleckmann
In this 60-minute chamber opera, commissioned by the Japan Society, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang combines and reimagines three texts by iconic Japanese novelist Ryunosuke Akutagawa. The result is a stunning and haunting monodrama, note to a friend, addressing our eternal human fascinations with death, love, family and suicide.
Photo credit: Lynne Harty
Anthony McGill, Demarre McGill, Titus Underwood, & Andrew Brady | Jasmine Barnes Commission
A new kind of commission project - at its core will be the musical commission of a new Concertante - a 15-20 min concerto for four brilliant and trailblazing principals of major US orchestras + chamber orchestra: Titus Underwood, Anthony McGill, Demarre McGill, and Andrew Brady. The work will be written by Jasmine Barnes and is meant to be a dynamic new addition to the repertoire, celebrating these unique artists and tailored to their artistry.
Miró Quartet & Karen Slack | Tamar-kali Commission
New work by acclaimed concert and film composer Tamar-kali (Mudbound) will feature soprano Karen Slack and the Miró Quartet, setting texts centered in the inspirational poetry of women of the Harlem Renaissance. Tamar-kali hopes to pay homage to the music and poetry of that time, bringing to the fore her own unique voice as a contemporary composer whose work is grounded across contemporary pop, classical and film music genres.
Photo credit: Matt Murphy
Gabriel Kahane | Attacca Quartet
I’ve known Nathan Schram of Attacca Quartet for almost a decade; he performed in the production of The Ambassador at BAM, and is a deeply soulful musician and person.
Photo credit: David Goddard
Parker Quartet | Anthony Cheung commission with Fleur Barron
The Parker Quartet and mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron will be working with composer Anthony Cheung on a commission for string quartet and mezzo-soprano which will be an 18- 20 min piece around the theme of Asian representation.
Parker Quartet | Beethoven Project
The 2022-23 season marked the Parker Quartet’s 20th anniversary. To celebrate, the Parkers embarked on The Beethoven Project, a multifaceted project centering around performances of the complete Beethoven quartet cycle, and includes newly commissioned encores for each of the Beethoven cycle concerts. Bringing in fresh and diverse voices of today and continuing the lineage of creation that Beethoven himself was so much a part of.
Pacifica Quartet & Karen Slack | James Lee III: A Double Standard
The Pacifica Quartet and soprano Karen Slack are offering a new song cycle by James Lee III commissioned by Carnegie Hall, Chamber Music Detroit, and the Shriver Hall Concert Series. “A Double Standard” is based on the poem of the same name by the prolific Baltimore poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, who was a free black woman from Baltimore in the 19th century.
Pacifica Quartet | James Lee III New Work for Children’s Choir and String Quartet
The Pacifica Quartet teams up with James Lee III on a new 10-minute work for children’s choir and string quartet. James is going to be centering the work around the theme of hunger and food insecurity with text coming from a poem called “Pitch In” by Sylvia Dianne Beverly.
Sphinx Virtuosi | Songs for Our Times
Sphinx Virtuosi’s Debut Album
Out Digitally on Deutsche Grammophon
This debut album represents the rich history of the Sphinx Organization and the vibrant future of classical music by centering the artistry of extraordinary composers and artistic visionaries of color.
Karen Slack | Of Thee I Sing!
Of Thee I Sing! Songs of Love and Justice is a critically acclaimed recital created by Karen Slack in the late Summer of 2020 during the height of the pandemic and just after the murder of George Floyd. The center of this moving program is the raw and powerful yet hopeful Langston Hughes poem, The Kids Who Die (1938), and a commissioned setting of that riveting text by American composer Scott Gendel.
Anthony McGill | Anthony Davis’ You Have the Right to Remain Silent
In the mid-1970s, more than 40 years before he won the Pulitzer Prize for music, pianist and composer Anthony Davis was driving with his wife to Boston for a concert when a police officer pulled them over.