Silent Voices: Lovestate at The New Victory Theatre, 2019
Brooklyn Youth Chorus has garnered a strong reputation as an arts producer. In 2019, Silent Voices: Lovestate premiered Off-Broadway at The New Victory Theater. Previous productions include the first two installments of the inclusive, social justice-oriented Silent Voices series (BAM 2017; National Sawdust 2018); Black Mountain Songs (BAM Next Wave Festival 2014); and Tell the Way (St. Ann’s Warehouse 2011).
Silent Voices (2017-19)
Silent Voices is a multimedia, multi-composer, and multi-year series of concert works with spoken word conceived, produced and performed by Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Silent Voices amplifies the voices of those silenced or marginalized and harnesses the power of young people to be instruments of change. The Chorus has commissioned a diverse group of innovative artists to interpret rich personal stories and historical narratives exploring contemporary themes of identity, orientation, status, boundaries and belonging.
Silent Voices: Lovestate, the third installment in the Silent Voices series, builds on the success of its earlier premieres at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House, National Sawdust, and PROTOTYPE Festival, in a program including stand-out works from the earlier series and new premieres. In Lovestate, a dynamic roster of composers and artists collaborate with the choristers in confronting the challenges of division and categorization, racism, sexism, immigration, threats to our environment and our understanding of truth, as we seek to affirm our vision of a more inclusive and compassionate future—a world we can all look forward to. Unifying this musically and topically broad work is the distinctively versatile and beautiful sound of the rigorously-trained singers, a chorus of culturally and socioeconomically diverse New York City young people, ages 12–18.
Commissioned composers for Lovestate include: Pulitzer Prize winners David Lang and Caroline Shaw, Olga Bell, Nico Muhly, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, Paola Prestini, Toshi Reagon, Shaina Taub, and Shelley Washington.
Produced by Brooklyn Youth Chorus
Performed by Brooklyn Youth Chorus and International Contemporary Ensemble
Conceived and Conducted by Dianne Berkun Menaker
Director - Kevin Newbury
Video Design - S. Katy Tucker
Sound Design - Garth MacAleavey
Dramaturgy - Peter McCabe
Choreographer - Melissa Mahone
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Black Mountain Songs (2014)
At North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, erstwhile commune and artistic playground of John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg and many others, a spirit of radical democracy prevailed. Students and teachers shared roles and work, boundaries between disciplines dissolved, and art bled into life, nurturing an atmosphere of unfettered creative collaboration.
In Black Mountain Songs, performed by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, commissioned and produced by BAM and Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and curated by Bryce Dessner and Richard Reed Parry, that collective thread is renewed. Seven composers—Dessner, Parry, Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly, Aleksandra Vrebalov, John King, and Tim Hecker—collaborate with filmmaker Matt Wolf (Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell) to create an expansive choral and visual work that celebrates and rekindles Black Mountain’s utopian spirit.
Creator - Bryce Dessner
Co-curators - Bryce Dessner & Richard Reed Parry
Director - Maureen Towey
Music composers - Jherek Bischoff, Bryce Dessner, Tim Hecker, John King, Nico Muhly, Richard Reed Parry, Caroline Shaw, and Aleksandra Vrebalov
Choreographer - Jenny Shore Butler
Filmmaker - Matt Wolf
Set designer - Mimi Lien
Costume designer - Sarah Maiorino
Lighting designer - Ben Stanton
Sound designer - Jamie McElhinney
Video & projection designer - Grant McDonald
Dramaturgy - Anne Erbe
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