Concert Ensemble, Winter’s Eve, 2019
As a bold commissioner and producer of new music, the Chorus has introduced into the repertoire more than 120 original works and world premieres by contemporary composers, including collaborations with Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw, Blues and R&B powerhouse Toshi Reagon, iconic British DJ Bishi, The National’s Bryce Dessner, and ubiquitous indie-classical superstar Nico Muhly.
Caroline Shaw
”It's Motion Keeps”
Britten's attraction to his native English folk songs and hymns comes through in so much of his music, from his choral and opera works to his chamber music and vocal arrangements. Taking a step in that direction, and then sideways and back and around, Its Motion Keeps is based on the words from the first verse of the American shape note hymn Kingwood, found in The Southern Harmony (1835) and other early 19th century hymn books. (Very likely it is a text that immigrated from England.) It begins with a palindromic viola pizzicato line that gestures to the continuo lines of Henry Purcell, to whom Britten wrote several homages. The choir echoes this contour at first and soon splits into swift canonic figures like those found in "This Little Babe" from Britten's Ceremony of Carols, eventually expanding into the "swirling spheres" above string arpeggiations in a texture that recalls the vivace movement of his second string quartet (one of his homages to Purcell). The ecstatic double choir section evokes the antiphonal sound of the early English choral tradition, with harmonies overlapping overhead in the reverberant stone cathedrals, creating brief dissonances while one sound decays as the next begins. The last line, "Time, like the tide, its motion keeps; Still I must launch through endless deeps," is just one of those perfect, beautiful lyrics — resilient and bittersweet. - Caroline Shaw
Angélica Negrón
”In My Dreams”
Gity Razaz
”She Sings”
“She Sings” is inspired by memories of my childhood and adolescence growing up in Iran. As a young girl learning to compose intuitively, I remember how challenging it was to keep the creative spark alive when there was no air for it to grow, so repressive were the society’s constraints on self-expression for women. Women weren’t even allowed to sing in public, a prohibition which continues to this day.
The text, written by Stephanie Fleischmann and based on a series of conversations we had, conjures not just the restrictive dynamics I faced during this time, but also those experienced by countless young women from then through today who strive to find the air to create." It is shocking how this is becoming such a timely piece, with everything that is going on in Iran right now. - Gity Razaz
Kenyon Duncan
”everything that holds us”
I brought the same question to each ensemble I collaborated with this year: What is freedom? This question guided our time together and produced the lyric for each piece, which is collaged from each ensemble’s responses.
One of the choristers wrote, “I feel free when I am listened to” and the music that began to take shape around that response became everything that holds us. This piece is a celebration of space— everything that is open-ended, interstitial, and unseen. A single melody emerges from the shifting harmony, calling for us to acknowledge “the space between us.” These spaces are openings, not absences. They resonate. Invisible connections form when we listen to each other. - Kenyon Duncan
Shara Nova
”Every Name”
"Every Name" began with a set of questions the choir was asking for the extended program of their project "She Is Called".
What is the experience of being a teenager in 2021 and navigating one's identity both in name and in the construct of gender?
What does your name mean? Do you resonate with your birth name? How can a name encapsulate a person? Have you changed your name? How many names do you have? Are we not the sum of the elements of existence itself? Of all that came before and the seed of the future, held in our bodies? How can a name mean all of that? And how as we change and transform as people throughout life, do we chose to name and identify ourselves? Do we identify as woman or femme? As we are thinking about the title "She is Called" and the usage of pronouns, what does "she" mean to me? And how might we hold a definition softly? - Shara Nova
Angélica Negrón
”Close Your Eyes”
Angélica Negrón
”Weird Stuff”
This piece is a lively musical journey that celebrates the beauty and mystery of nature, the joy of interacting with animals, and the enchantment of music. It includes field recordings of a mysterious creature (possibly a bird or frog) captured in my hometown in Puerto Rico, and invites the choristers to interact with this natural soundscape at certain moments. The lyrics are based on ideas and words shared by the choristers, which comedian and writer River L. Ramirez transformed into a poem that I then set to music. - Angélica Negrón
Nathalie Joachim
”Blood Sister”
In loving memory of Edgire Farah Joachim
A sister links you to past and present by bond and blood. A seemingly unshakeable tie that strengthens and challenges you; a connection that makes you feel safe and understood.
In the wake of losing one of my own biological sisters, Blood Sister - driven by the powerful text of Jaki Shelton Green’s Revelations - personifies the haunting weight that comes with losing a vital piece of my sisterly bloodline. A woman who knew me, not just in flesh and bone, but by way of the unthinkable triumphs of every women that carried and spilled our blood before either of us took form. A woman whose sadness, pain, and magic now resides in the deepest corners of my heart, from which our ancestors sing.
Black women have historically relied on fostering sisterhood to encourage resilience and seek solace in one another, as society has continually placed us at the inauspicious intersection of both racial and gender inequities. This work honors that history as well - an inspiring form of fellowship that transcends generations and extends to origin. - Nathalie Joachim
Yaz Lancaster
”Madonna”
Knowing that the premiere of this work would occur in May, near Mother’s Day, I wanted to write a piece that dealt with a mother-child relationship. The students in the Brooklyn Youth Chorus Bass Ensemble came up with a lot of different takes on the topic, and Madonna (referencing the “Madonna and Child”) is centered in pride, forgiveness, and care. Musically, I wanted to turn the ensemble into a “pop band.” The piece leans into hip-hop, RnB, and gospel genres, and includes an electronic track that accompanies the vocals. In Fall 2023, I took recordings of the students' voices in our workshops to sample and embed into the track, along with drums, synthesizers, and guitars – I deeply enjoyed getting to bring. - Yaz Lancaster
Alev Lenz
”Crab Grief”
The Junior Ensemble, as the oldest age group I worked with, was iridescently alternating between heart to head, and back. It was an incredible experience to be able to work with three different age groups and, in own personal retrospect, see how with age we seem to move from heart to head. Hopefully we can always keep the connection between the two intact and while we swirl in fantasies and concepts also dive into feeling, longing and mourning. Crab Grief calls in big questions about grief and the exploitation of the natural world to satisfy our needs: and also some musical explorations like ‘Hocketing’ - a technique I learned while writing this piece in the December of 2023 from Meredith Monk, on this serendipitous journey of continuously learning together.
Tania León
”Mujer, Define Mujer”
Original poetry by Aaliyah Daniels, NY Poet Laureate Ambassador
Aaliyah C. Daniels is a teen writer from Hunts Point, in the Bronx. She is part of the 2019 NYC slam team and, for two years, has been New York Youth Poet Laureate. Daniels has performed across the city, including at the Brooklyn Museum, Adidas, Joe’s Pub, the Apollo, the Intrepid and more. She is president of A.C.T.I.O.N., a teen activist organization that works to dismantle oppression in the South Bronx. She will be attending Kenyon College in the fall as an English major with an emphasis in Creative Writing.
Notes on the poetry:
Femininity is constantly at risk and being a woman is not the same as being dainty or incapable. My father is a misogynist so the first line about not letting feminism get in the way of the beauty of being a woman is something he has said to me. We ended up arguing about how women having power and beauty have no correlation in a woman's eyes as they do in a man. We think of ourselves as capable, as warriors, as providers and men fail to see that at times. So I start to think about womanhood and femininity and how women are used and seen in war. In the olden days, men used to go to war and they would say protect 'woman and children' and I couldn't fathom how degrading that was. That in war, in a time of danger adult woman would be degraded to that of a child. That we are so fragile and dainty that we must be protected like children. Then I thought to wait and ask a man about this, so I asked my significant other and he said, in war, to break down a village they kill children and rape then kill the women. In response to that, I was like "I love being an object for someone's destruction. I love that we are such a commodity and so objectified that we are used as parts of war plans to break men." In a fit of anger I asked my mother and she said, 'This is not about men or objectifying us. It is about the simple fact that we, as women are so significant to the household that men cannot handle us outside of it because we are the only things capable of breaking them. As women, we are their caregivers, supporters, lovers, and peace of mind and they think keeping us in a box will help them protect us but that only hurts them more. When a woman is able to take control of her own being she will conquer, protect and do so much more than men themselves can do."
So I took this sentiment of women being the only one capable of inflicting lasting pain and a woman being so important that they are the things that hurt themselves while also being all these amazing and important things. Women are the center of the household, the world, and the universe. Our importance is unmatched, and while men think they can try hurt or overpower us, they're only attacking themselves; they cannot take away all of our strength because we will bounce back stronger than ever, every time they try to dismantle us. - Aaliyah C. Daniels
David Lang
”she is called”
“she is called” was written for the amazing young women of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. I started by imagining a chorus full of inspired young women, and how our society has traditionally given young women so many mixed messages about who they are and what they can accomplish. Then I wondered where we got all these ideas from, and how long we have had them. So I searched the King James translation of the Old Testament for every phrase that begins with the word 'she.' The text for she is called is a catalog of the unique actions of an anonymous Biblical woman, sung in the order in which those actions appear. - David Lang
Alev Lenz
”C-Word”
“C-Word” is a reflection and collection of (other) C-Words connected to the self-worth of women. What effects do other C-Words have on me and what structural dynamic hides behind the actual C-Word? By turning my initial reflection on C-Word(s) from a personal notebook artwork into musical form for BYC, I wanted to combine the confusion around societal confines on womanhood, the force of the call for freedom and the sheer joy of sisterhood in on piece of music. - Alev Lenz