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Welcome to

In Motion:
A Spring Social

The Agger Fish Building
Brooklyn Navy Yard

May 4, 2022

Gala Underwriter
Sam* and Sara Nana-Sinkam

Gala Vice-Chair
Goldman Sachs

Gold Supporters
Jacqueline* and Joseph Aguanno
John Campanella*

Silver Supporters
Anjali* and Hemant Baijal
Katherine* and Gary Bartholomaus
Marie DeRosa* and Richard McNeil
Jessica* and Cas Holloway
Katrin and Jonathan* Rouner

Bronze Supporters
Naomi Gardner* & Dean Johnson
Alisa Guyer Galperin & Misha Galperin 
Kara Hailey* & Nicola Allais 
Claire Marble*
Karen Rockey*

Virtuoso Supporters
Lauren Ashcraft*
Lynn Cole
J. Barclay Collins**
Arlette* Ferguson Mathis and Caliph Mathis
Katia and Ian Lirenman
Timothy Parsons*
Paola Prestini & Jeffrey Zeigler
Deborah Reik & Andrew Levinson
Hillary Richard* & Pete McCabe

Benefactors
Wanyong and Chris Austin
Helen Butler
Anne Wenk Cashion & Jack Cashion*
Claudia Castro & Werner Stanzl 
Sabina and Sayant Chatterjee 
John Farley 
Tracy Garrison-Feinberg*
Brook and Avi Gesser
Joseph and Valerie Louzonis 
Grace Row*
Judy Stanton
Amanda Van Doorene* 

Gala Donors
David and Jennifer Emil
Ashley Firestone

*Board of Trustees
** Emeritus Board of Trustees

In Motion: A Spring Social
Wednesday, May 4, 2022

Honoree
Alumni Achievement Award Winner
Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen

6:00 PM - A Spring Social
Musical activities by
Aviva Jaye
&
Bryan Carter

7:00 PM - Concert Program

Let Them Not Say
Olga Bell (b. 1983)
Lyrics by Jane Hirschfeld

Biking Through Time
Paola Prestini (b. 1975)
Lyrics by Maria Popova

She Sings
Gity Razaz (b. 1986)
Lyrics by Stephanie Fleischmann

Liquid Days
Philip Glass (b. 1937)
Lyrics by David Byrne

Hallelujah
Leonard Cohen (1934-2016)
arr. Rachel Devore Fogarty

Performers

Brooklyn Youth Chorus

Dianne Berkun Menaker, Artistic Director & Conductor
Chelsey Hill, Chorus Manager
Shala Way, Chorus Manager
Aleeza Meir, Pianist

Metropolis Ensemble (artists appearing)
Angela Wee - Violin
Geirthrudur Anna Gudmundsdottir - Cello
Chieh-Fan Yiu - Viola

7:30 PM - VIP Afterparty
Honoree & Alumni Achievement Award Winner Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen
Student Speaker, Amor Azor, Junior Ensemble, Van Lier Fellow

BROOKLYN YOUTH CHORUS’s Grammy Award-winning ensemble, led by Founder & Artistic Director Dianne Berkun Menaker, has collaborated with an impressive range of organizations and artists including the New York Philharmonic, The National, David Byrne, Wye Oak, Bon Iver, Shara Nova, International Contemporary Ensemble, William Brittelle, London Symphony Orchestra, Barbra Streisand, Arcade Fire, Sir Elton John, and Grizzly Bear.

Recordings of the Chorus have been featured in major motion pictures, commercials, and live events, including several tracks in The National’s new concept album I Am Easy To Find, a new work by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke for rag & bone’s Spring 2016 collection, Chanel Paris’s 2019 Capsule campaign featuring Pharrell Williams, and Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s OTR II World Tour. 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.

Brooklyn Youth Chorus has garnered a strong reputation as an arts producer. This past season 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). The Chorus has released two albums through New Amsterdam Records—Silent Voices (2018) and Black Mountain Songs (2017)—and has appeared at important contemporary music festivals including the Ecstatic Music Festival, MusicNOW, 21c Liederabend, Barbican Mountain and Waves Festival, and the PROTOTYPE Festival.

Founded in 1992, Brooklyn Youth Chorus has served nearly 6,000 students over the course of its history, typically involving more than 700 students in its core after-school and public-school outreach programs. The Chorus’s professional faculty teach a wide range of repertoire and styles using founding artistic director Dianne Berkun Menaker’s proven Cross-Choral Training® method, emphasizing healthy and versatile vocal technique, music theory, sight-singing and ear training. Classes take place at their Cobble Hill headquarters and neighborhood locations in Bay Ridge, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville, Brooklyn Heights, Crown Heights, Red Hook, and Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen 

Acclaimed as a “young star” and “complete artist” by The New York Times and "extravagantly gifted... poised to redefine what’s possible for singers of this distinctive voice type” by the San Francisco Chronicle, countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen has been recognized with awards from the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Plácido Domingo’s Operalia, the Richard Tucker Music Foundation, Sullivan Foundation, George London Foundation, and others. His first commercial recording project - the world premiere recording of Kenneth Fuchs' Poems of Life with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by JoAnn Falletta - was honored with a 2019 GRAMMY® Award in the Best Classical Compendium category, which recognizes albums with multiple soloists and multiple works.

Aryeh trained as a member of the Houston Grand Opera Studio and at San Francisco Opera (Merola and Adler Fellowship Programs). His broad operatic repertoire spans from pillars of the Baroque– Bach, Cavalli, Handel, Gluck, Monteverdi, and Vivaldi – to leading modern composers – including Britten, Dove, and Glass.

In the current season, he makes his Metropolitan Opera debut as Rosencrantz in the Met and U.S. premiere of Brett Dean's Hamlet. He makes his Opernhaus Zürich debut in a world premiere ballet creation choreographed by Christian Spuck upon the music of Monteverdi's Madrigals. On the concert stage, he makes his Russian and role debuts in the title role of Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, he debuts at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw in his role debut as Prince Go-Go in Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre with the Dutch Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, and he returns to The Dallas Opera in a series of gala concerts, among other engagements.

His recent performances include engagements at Adelaide Festival (Australia), San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Theater an der Wien, San Francisco Symphony, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, San Francisco Ballet, and many others.

Aryeh earned a Bachelor’s degree in History from Princeton University and received academic certificates in Vocal Performance and Judaic Studies.

Let Them Not Say
Music by Olga Bell
Lyrics by Jane Hirshfield

COMPOSER NOTES

When BYC first commissioned a piece from me for Silent Voices: If You Listen program in 2017, I set about looking for a text that advocated for the Earth, for the climate crisis. Jane Hirshfield’s poem “On The Fifth Day” was precisely this kind of work, and I was lucky to be in touch with Ms. Hirshfield throughout the process. When I was fortunate to once again have the opportunity of writing for the Chorus, Ms. Hirshfield sent me “Let Them Not Say”, which she views as a companion poem to “On the Fifth Day”. An unflinching confrontation with our tenuous present moment, and how future generations might look back on us and our decisions, “Let Them Not Say” is darker than “On the Fifth Day”, but it is not without hope. I wanted to infuse the piece with as much harmonic richness and “brightness” as possible, as a counterpoint to a text that may at first seem thematically bleak.

Ms. Hirshfield further illuminates “Let Them Not Say” in this interview from 2020, in Psychology Today:

“What a reader finds in a poem is often a mirror, both of the person who is looking and listening and of the particular weather of that particular moment of listening. I think you are right to hear hope.

The poem is, without question, dark: It imagines the judgment of us, of this time, that would come from those who live in a future made by our failures. But it’s also a poem trying to undo its own need to exist. The repetition, over and over of “Let them not say”… the poem’s hope lives in that phrase, midway as it is between prayer and command. If you can still say “Let them not say,” the future is still malleable.

The poem also holds, I hope, a certain tenderness toward our human frailty. We like to be warm. We like to read at night. We like to praise. Kerosene lamp light is beautiful, you know. I lived three years using only kerosene lamps for light. That was before we understood global warming, before solar panels.

I don’t want this poem… to cast its readers into despair. Despair is a prescription for inaction. I want this…to be the bell that summons the fire truck to the fire.”

LYRICS

Let Them Not Say

Let them not say: we did not see it.

We saw.

Let them not say: we did not hear it.

We heard.

Let them not say: they did not taste it.

We ate, we trembled.

Let them not say: it was not spoken, not written. We spoke, we witnessed with voices and hands.

Let them not say: they did nothing.

We did not-enough.

Let them say, as they must say something:

A kerosene beauty.

It burned.

Let them say we warmed ourselves by it, read by its light, praised, and it burned.

8.6.14

Biking Through Time
Music by Paola Prestini
Lyrics by Maria Popova

Biking Through Time
things women could not do
Dedicated to and inspired by Maria Popova

1. Victorian Times/1895
2. 1960's Spain
3. 1970 USA

COMPOSER NOTE

When Dianne came to me with an idea for a new piece, she gave me a set of questions. I settled on the prompt-Who can a girl be - and what can a girl do? and the idea of gender messaging. I quickly fell into Maria Popova's The Marginalian, and the Don'ts for how to ride a bicycle, through time. Between that list, and other blogs Maria compiled, which included the map of a woman's heart illustrated in Victorian Times, I created a dramaturgy of the do's and don'ts for women through time, with the idea of biking through time, and our rights.

LYRICS

1. Victorian Times/1895

A map of my heart:

We love sentimentality

We love display

In us a land of selfishness

And one of admiration.

We love to dress, we love display

We're cracked by a sea of wealth...

Our hearts are so simple

You can read us like a map

The open country of our hearts...

In Victorian Times.

Rules for Riding a Bike

Don't...

Be a fright

Faint on the road

Wear a man's cap

Don't wear tight garters

Don't forget your toolbag

Don't attempt a century

Don't coast

Don't boast of your long rides

Wear loud hued leggings

Wear clothes that don't fit!

Don't neglect a light's out cry

Don't race

Don't wear laced boots.

Don't chew gum!

Don't let your hair flow down your back

Don't allow dear Fido to accompany you

Don't scratch

Don't scream

Don't ignore

Don't discuss

Don't try to ride in your brother's clothes to see how it feels

Don't scream if you meet a cow

If she sees you first she will scream

Don't allow

Don't scream...

1960's Spain

Women shall not appear on this streets of this village

with dresses that are too tight

in those places which provoke the evil passions of men

They must never wear dresses that are too short

It is shameful for women to walk

Every woman who appears in the streets

Must wear stockings at the age of twelve

Girls must begin to wear dresses that reach to the knee

and stockings all the time

and no short sleeves

Little boys must not appear in the streets with their upper legs bare

Girls must never walk in our of way places

To do so is both immoral and dangerous

No decent woman wears trousers

What they call modern dancing is strictly forbidden

No decent woman or girl is ever seen on a bike.

1970's USA

No credit card

Fired for being pregnant

No front lines

No jury

No ivy league education

You may not fight sexual harrassment in the work place

You may not take birth control

You must comply with your husband

You nay ride a bike.

No.

She Sings
Music by Gity Razaz
Lyrics by Stephanie Fleischmann

COMPOSER NOTE

"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.

LYRICS

The wind, like a kiss,
lifts up her scarf, tendering
the back of her neck, 
true with song.

Even when the air is still, she hears it—
as she drifts towards sleep,
when she wakes,
she hears a singing… 

Singing, she has been told a thousand times, is not for girls. Girls do not sing.

…as she walks to school,
dreaming into the day,
as she links arms with her friends,
their laughter a song— 

Singing, she has been told a thousand times, is not for girls. Girls do not sing.

On the way home,
as the cicadas serenade the afternoon,
she hums, she hums their song—

Singing, she has been told a thousand times, is not for girls. Girls do not sing.

But then the wind blows,  
lifting her hijab,
hair flying free,
the kiss of the breeze, tendering
the back of her neck 
true with song.
She breathes in. 
She breathes in and she sings, she does not hum, she sings out loud, she does not stop.
Singing
over the whoosh of the traffic,
clearer than the muezzin’s call to prayer,
louder than years upon years
of her sisters’ silenced invocations thundering in her ears,
she sings, 
stronger, sweeter than the wind,
stronger, sweeter, louder, clearer
she sings,
her song floating up towards the sky.

Liquid Days
Music by Philip Glass
Lyrics by David Byrne

Oh Round Desire
Oh Red Delight
The River is Blood
The Time is Spent

Love likes me
Love takes it shoes off and sits on the couch
Love has an answer for everything
Love smiles gently...and crosses its legs
well here we are well here we are

Sleep
Sleep

Sleep...Being in Air
Sleep...Turning to speak
Sleep...Losing our Way
Sleep...Pour it all Out

We are old Friends
I offer Love a Beer
Love watches Television
Love needs a bath
Love could use a shave
Love rolls out of the chair and wiggles
on the floor
Jumps Up
I'm Laughing at Love

Drink Me
Drink Me
Drink Me
Drink Me

Drive...Why do You Ask?
Breaths...Still is the Night
Drive...It is much Further
Sleep...Than We Thought

In Liquid Days
Land Travel(s) Hard
Fly Home Daughter
Cover Your Ears

Dianne Berkun Menaker is the Founder & Artistic Director of Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Under her visionary leadership, the Chorus has become one of the most highly regarded ensembles in the country and has stretched the artistic boundaries for the youth chorus. Hailed by The New York Times as "a remarkable choral conductor," Ms. Berkun Menaker has prepared choruses for performances with acclaimed conductors, including Alan Gilbert, Gustavo Dudamel, and Marin Alsop. Most notably, she prepared the Chorus for its 2002 debut with the New York Philharmonic in John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls, the recording for which the Chorus won a Grammy Award in 2005. Ms. Berkun Menaker has also prepared the Chorus for appearances and recordings with artists such as Barbra Streisand, Sir Elton John, Philip Glass, Grizzly Bear, John Legend, Natasha Bedingfield, and Alicia Keys. She has developed an active commissioning program, born out of a desire to showcase the Chorus's versatility and uniquely beautiful sound and has collaborated with some of the most important composers of our time. Ms. Berkun Menaker is a regular choral clinician and teaching artist for such organizations as the New York Philharmonic and The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall and has also presented workshops and master classes for New York University, New York State School Music Association, the American Choral Directors Association, and the New York City Department of Education. She is the creator of the Chorus's Cross-Choral Training® program, a proven holistic and experiential approach to developing singers in a group setting encompassing both voice and musicianship pedagogy.

Metropolis Ensemble is a dynamically evolving 21st Century Orchestra. Dedicated to creating a future for classical music that is of and for the time we live in, Metropolis Ensemble’s driving force is its founder, Grammy-nominated conductor Andrew Cyr (“a prominent influence in the world of newly emerging music”, Washington Post). Described by the New York Times as a ‘vibrant collective”, Metropolis Ensemble exists to support ascending contemporary classical performers and composers, often engaging them with other bleeding-edge cultural innovators and artists through its unique collaborative process.

Aleeza Meir (piano) From the greenhouse of a homeschooled childhood through intensive personal mentoring from acclaimed artists including Malcolm Bilson and Steven Stucky, Aleeza Meir is accomplished on piano, organ and harpsichord.  She began her career as a staff pianist at the Ithaca College School of Music at the age of 16.  Besides all the major concert halls of NYC, she has performed nationally and internationally in a wide variety of venues and capacities ranging from continuo player to concerto soloist. She placed second in the International Piano Festival competition in Bechyně (CZ) and the Otto B. Schoepfle national organ competition (USA).  She served as pianist for the Boys Choir of Harlem, and has been John Rutter’s go-to keyboardist in NYC since arriving in 2002, performing in more than 50 concerts at Carnegie Hall. She is faculty pianist for Middlebury Language Schools’ professional ‘German for Singers’ program and music director for historic Old First Reformed Church in Park Slope.  As pianist for BYC’s Concert and Junior Ensembles she regularly performs premieres of works of today’s leading composers, and appears in festivals including MusicNOW, Ecstatic Music Festival, Bang on a Can, and numerous broadcasts on WQXR.  Aleeza is also the founder and director of Baroquelyn, a Brooklyn-based baroque chamber orchestra that marries historic performance practice with a fresh, modern, and local take on well-loved old music.  Please visit www.baroquelyn.com.

Aviva Jaye is a performing artist & composer primarily creating music, wielding voice, keys, harp, guitar & ukulele. She combines acoustic & electronic elements to unlock a portal for listeners to venture, exploring the dimensions of empathy, self-awareness, social justice & futurism. Her interdisciplinary work includes theatre, dance, paper arts & poetry.  As a youth advocate, she serves as Program Associate with Brooklyn Youth Chorus & as a teaching artist with Marquis Studios & The Wooster Group in NYC public schools.

Recent projects include We Can Change the Country by Darius Jones (Roulette); featured artist for Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit; composer for the play LORDES (New Ohio Theater); live music for [GET WELL SOON] you black + bluised by Nic Kay (Abrons Art Center); music direction & performance for “Four Questions”, a Pride production (LaMama); featured artist at The Public’s Civic Salon series and Artist-In-Residence at Guildhall (East Hampton). Aviva is a band member performing with Arthur Moon, Dessa, Echo Bloom & Raia Was.

Bryan Carter With a confidence reflecting an instrumental and compositional maturity that both belie his age and announce the arrival of a remarkable talent, Bryan Carter exudes what promises a highly successful career. Shortly after completing his training at The Juilliard School, Carter has already played with legendary artists including McCoy Tyner, Wynton Marsalis, Marcus Roberts, Kenny Barron, Michael Feinstein and Kurt Elling.

When Bryan isn’t working in the worlds of film, television and broadway he can be found touring the world with his band, “Bryan Carter & The Swangers” or its larger counterpart, “The Swangers Orchestra”. Bryan served as the drummer for NBC’S “Maya & Marty” and most recently, the classic television program, “Sesame Street”.

Bryan most recently contributed additional orchestrations to Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer-Prize winning Broadway show, “A Strange Loop”, and served as co-orchestrator for Broadway’s “Some Like It Hot”— a new musical comedy, based on the classic MGM film, with music by Marc Shaiman.

Releasing on June 3, Bryan’s new album “I Believe”, will be available via Bandstand Presents and La Reserve Records.

Concert Ensemble

Allegra Advincula
Melina Ahmad
Maya Baijal
Maya Barth
Trilliane Bergeron
Siena Bird
Brianna Charles
Maya Chatterjee
Mekaeli Cox
Senlee Dieme
Pia Dorosin
Margot Ehrsam
Sofia Galperin
Sadie Gesser
Isabel Gilabert
Ella Greene
Stevie Kim-Rubell
Amaranthe Lirenman
Harmonie Lirenman
Pilar Lu-Heda
Bianca Martinez
Joanna McCabe
Faith Monroe
Sicile Naddeo-Gjergji
Sylvie Oates
Violet Ariadne Paris-Hillmer
Jadesola Pedro
Sophie Penenberg
Lila Penenberg
Ellie Powell
Maya Renaud-Levine
Renee Ricevuto
Reaiah Roberts
Tatyana Sgaraglino
Josie Shehadi
Naia Shepherd
Scarlett Staiano
Clementine Vonnegut
Mariana Weaver

Junior Ensemble

Aine Alexander-Mullen
Amor Azor
Lydia Bach
Lily Brown
Leah Brown
Shania Brown
Palmares Bustamante
Greta Currah
Josie Devlin
Maggie Dicus
Matilda Endres
Arianne Fahie
Laila Gilabert
Rex Gilrain Portillo
Talia Greenland
Michael Heady
Sheen Heady
Lula Keteyian
Vivian Kravet
Gertrude Lipkin
Amelia Levenson
Sasha Medvinsky
Lucy Mellon
Maahi Nair
Nia Nelson
Kharla Pinney-Lopez
Lydia Schulze
Niko Sembo
Malana Simms
Vaikuntha Tamayo
Eve Van Den Brulle
Frida Velez
Rachael Weiss
Janka Wilczynski

Nicolas Grabar, Chair
Jacqueline Aguanno, Vice-Chair
Jessica Holloway, Secretary
Claire Marble, Treasurer

Lauren Ashcraft
Anjali Baijal
Katherine Bartholomaus
John Campanella 
Anne Wenk Cashion
Marie DeRosa
Naomi Gardner 
Tracy Garrison-Feinberg
Kara Hailey 
Ryan Martin
Arlette Ferguson Mathis
Sam Nana-Sinkam
Timothy Parsons
Hillary Richard
Karen Rockey 
Jonathan Rouner
Grace Row
Johari Jenkins Taylor
Amanda Van Doorene

Trustees Emeriti
Judy Berkun (In Memoriam)
J. Barclay Collins, II
Charles J. Hamm
Narcissa Titman
Dick Yancey

Artistic Advisory Board

John Adams
Deidre Chadwick
Rufus Collins
Anthony Roth Costanzo
Julian Crouch
Bryce Dessner
Jeremy Geffen
Andrew Hamingson
Hilda Harris
Jim Keller
Beth Morrison
Paola Prestini
R. Douglas Sheldon
Ted Sperling
Theodore Wiprud
Michelle Yagoda, M.D.

Dianne Berkun Menaker
Founder & Artistic Director

Megan Lemley
Chief Operating Officer

Angela Batchelor
Training Divisions Program Manager

Marjory Bruno
Registrar & Finance Associate

Kyle Henning
School Administrator

Chelsey Hill
Chorus Manager, Concert Ensemble

Ruben Llopiz
Finance and Business Manager

Ezra Lowrey
Production & Events Manager

Aviva Mitchell
Program Associate and Rehearsal Manager

Ryan Pointer
Director of Marketing and Communications

Shala Way
Chorus Manager, Men's Ensemble & Junior Ensemble

Sarah Weinberg
Director of Development & Institutional Advancement

Kiena Williams
Outreach and Public School Program Manager, Conductor

Travis Horton
Bookkeeping Consultant 

Bryony Romer Consulting
Grant Writer

Jared Mathis
Seasonal Development Assistant

Dianne Berkun Menaker, Kristopher Burke, Jean Sophie Kim, Kristen Von Bargen, Kiena Williams, and Eric Williamson
Conductors

Cassandra Ball, Rachel DeVore Fogarty, Sammy Grob, David Lancelle, Aleeza Meir
Pianists

Sean Pentland, John Schmergel, Cassi Torres, and Mara Waldman
Electives Faculty

Austin Cody, Asia Harvey-Wright, Amandla Turner
Program Assistants

Raquel Klein
Standby Conductor