Our bags are packed and we're headed North....then East, then West, then South! With three different programs, composers with familiar names (León, Lang, Woods, Wang Lu), and the astounding artistry of Claire Chase (and her flutes). 

Join us on our Winter Tour, at...

Boston Symphony Orchestra

David Lang's poor hymnal

(abridged)

Thursday, January 29 – 7:30pm

Saturday, January 31 – 8pm

At the invitation of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, we travel from one birthplace of American Democracy to another to sing a new, abridged version of David Lang’s poor hymnal – our most-performed work. Our recording of poor hymnal is currently nominated for a Grammy Award in Best Choral Performance.

Its resonance and relevance seem to increase daily.

We sing it in the hope that, someday, it won’t be necessary.

poor hymnal opens these BSO concerts; the second part of the concert finds the orchestra and gospel choirs giving the East Coast premiere of Carlos Simon’s Good News Mass, a celebratory homage to Black joy, spiritual discovery, and the power of faith.

Stanford University | Bing Concert Hall

Harold Meltzer's You Are Who I Love

w/ Sandbox Percussion

and music of Ēriks Ešenvalds and Sarah Rimkus

Wednesday, February 25 – 7:30pm

Harold Meltzer's collaboration with poet (and Stanford Professor) Aracelis Girmay, You Are Who I Love, produced one of his largest and most thoughtful works. With the four percussionists of Sandbox playing over 100 instruments, the work floats with ease from humor to defiance, intimacy to insistence.

Our friend Harold, who died in August 2024, left a lasting gift to remind us of the value of hearing the unheard, seeing the unseen, and living a day, an hour, or just a moment in the life of another.

Hershey, Philadelphia, & Carnegie Hall

Infinite Body on tour

Tania León's Singsong w/ Claire Chase, flutes

Wang Lu's At Which Point

Ayanna Woods' Infinite Body

Saturday, March 21 – 5pm

Derry Presbyterian Church | Hershey, PA

Sunday, March 22 – 4pm

St. Luke and the Epiphany | Philadelphia

Tuesday, March 24 – 7:30pm

Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall | NYC

Our friend (and virtuosic flutist and MacArthur Fellow) Claire Chase joins us again with her signature tsunami of energy, as we revisit Rita Dove’s hard-edged, raw “cricket poems” in Tania León’s endlessly inventive Singsong, which dances its way through a journey of Black singers from pre-slavery to today. Wang Lu’s At Which Point boldly explores the fragility and emptiness of grief found in Pulitzer-winning poet Forrest Gander’s world of those “left behind.” Finally, Ayanna Woods’ Infinite Body, a co-commission of Carnegie Hall and The Crossing, explores how capitalism influences our relationship to our bodies, peering through the lenses of the natural world, burnout culture, and embodiment, to observe and unsettle the notion of our separateness. 

Peace Center & Big Ears

poor hymnal on tour

David Lang's poor hymnal (full version)

Thursday, March 26 – 8pm

Peace Center Concert Hall | Greenville, SC

Friday, March 27 – 8:45pm

Saturday, March 28 – 1:30pm

Big Ears Festival | Knoxville, TN

Called “music that doesn’t pull punches” by The Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Patrick Stearns, poor hymnal tries to get to the core of what a religious experience can be. “What I love about hymnals,” Lang writes, “is that they’re a catalog of things a community of worshippers can agree on — a catalog that can be sung. And what the worshippers are singing about matters.”

Come say hello to us, as we return to Big Ears, BSO, and Carnegie Hall, make our debuts in Hershey and Greenville, or settle in at home in Center City, Philadelphia. Singing the stories of our time. 

Season Artwork by Caroline Bergstrøm Scheibel.

Photograph by by Clara Weishahn.