BAM Presents World Premiere of Brooklyn Youth Chorus' SILENT VOICES

Celebrating the Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus' 25th anniversary, Silent Voices is a fully-staged multimedia, multi-composer work conceived, commissioned, produced, and performed by the chorus.

Silent Voices harnesses the power of young people to be instruments of change, entrusting the vital issues of our day to its most astonishing young singers and addressing systemic injustice in harmony. Conceived by Brooklyn Youth Chorus' founding artistic director, Dianne Berkun Menaker, each Silent Voices choral composition takes on a specific issue: the distribution of power and privilege, gender roles and stereotypes, immigration, systemic racism, economic abandonment, and sustained inequity.

Hosted by Q2 Music's Helga Davis, Silent Voices features new compositions from eight composers-Jeff Beal, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Paul Miller (DJ Spooky), Nico Muhly, Shara Nova, Toshi Reagon, Kamala Sankaram, and Caroline Shaw-who boldly unpack their social experiences, observations, and questions about "otherness" in America.

Original writings by Hilton Als (The New Yorker), who recently won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, Claudia Rankine (Citizen), and playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury round out the work, which also features personal narratives, interviews, and historical texts. The libretto includes passages from authors and thinkers including Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow; George Savile, Marquis of Halifax's 17th century chapbook to his daughter, The Lady's New-Year's Gift; and Patricia Bell-Scott's The Firebrand and the First Lady, drawing from letters between civil rights activist Pauli Murray and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Mary Kouyoumdjian's I Can Barely Look uses text from Brooklyn Youth Chorus members after seeing a collection of media-circulated photos of Syrian refugees; Shara Nova's Blind to the Illness was created in response to the killing of African Americans at the hands of the police, which ignited protests around the country last year; and Toshi Reagon's Building Brooklyn offers commentary on the shifting, moving, and displacement of communities - be they race, religion, or class.

Video projections by Peter Nigrini, photo portraiture by Jay Maisel, and costumes by rag & bone are integrated throughout. Unifying this musically and topically broad work is the distinctively beautiful sound of the rigorously-trained singers-a chorus of culturally and socioeconomically diverse New York City young people, ages 12-18.

The world premiere of Silent Voices at BAM marks the culmination of a special year-long series of performances and workshops featuring an extraordinary range of artistic collaborators. Throughout the first half of the season, portions and excerpts of Silent Voices were performed throughout the city including appearances at FIAF/Prototype, National Sawdust and The Greene Space at WQXR.

About the artists

Named WQXR's 2016-17 artists-in-residence and celebrating its 25th anniversary, Brooklyn Youth Chorus is a collective of young singers and vocal ensembles re-envisioning choral music performance through artistic innovation, collaboration, and their distinctively beautiful sound. The New York Times has hailed the Chorus as "remarkable young singers," who perform "with confidence, energy and tenderness. The sheer beauty of their singing [is] captivating." This March, the Chorus released its first solo recording, Black Mountain Songs, which premiered at the 2014 BAM Next Wave Festival.

With an incredibly versatile range and repertoire, Brooklyn Youth Chorus combines intensive voice training and music study with exceptional performance experiences. The Chorus has appeared with acclaimed orchestras and conductors, including the New York and Los Angeles philharmonics, and London and Atlanta symphonies, and under the batons of Alan Gilbert, Gustavo Dudamel, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Additionally, the Chorus has performed with major recording artists such as Barbra Streisand, John Legend, and Grizzly Bear.

The Chorus has been touted by The New York Times as a "consistently bold organization" that regularly commissions and presents new music in genre-defying forms. The Chorus's repertoire includes more than 100 original works and world premieres. The Chorus won a Grammy Award in 2005 with the New York Philharmonic for the world premiere live recording of John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls.

The Chorus 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 by Artistic Director Dianne Berkun Menaker, Brooklyn Youth Chorus's program encompasses over 650 students in its after-school and public school outreach programs at their Cobble Hill headquarters and locations in Bedford-Stuyvesant, East Flatbush, Red Hook, and Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Dianne Berkun Menaker is the founder and 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," Berkun Menaker has prepared choruses for performances with acclaimed conductors Alan Gilbert, Marin Alsop, James Levine, Gustavo Dudamel, and Robert Spano and others. 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. Berkun Menaker 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.

Kristin Marting is a director of hybrid work based in NYC. She has constructed 27 stage works, including 12 original hybrid works, eight reimaginings of novels and seven classic plays. Marting has directed 17 works at HERE and also premiered works at 3LD, Ohio Theatre, and Soho Rep. Her work has toured to 7 Stages, Berkshire Festival, Brown, MCA, New World, Painted Bride, Perishable, UMass, Moscow Art Theatre and Oslo. She has directed workshops for Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, Playwrights Horizons, Public Theatre, Target Margin, and others. Select residencies include Bard, Cal Arts, LMCC, Mabou Mines, MASS MOCA, NACL, Orchard Project, Playwrights Center, and Williams. Marting was named a nytheatre.com "Person of the Decade," a "Woman to Watch" by ArtTable and received a BAX10 Award. Kristin is co-founder and Artistic Director of HERE, where she directs projects, cultivates artists and programs (including 17 OBIE-award winners) within two performance spaces for an annual audience of 30,000.

The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is an artist collective committed to transforming the way music is created and experienced. As performer, curator, and educator, ICE explores how new music intersects with communities across the world. The ensemble's 35 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. A recipient of the American Music Center's Trailblazer Award and the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, ICE was also named the 2014 Musical America Ensemble of the Year. The group currently serves as artists-in-residence at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts' Mostly Mozart Festival, and previously led a five-year residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Jeff Beal is a four-time Emmy Award winning composer known for his genre-defying musical fluidity. His film scores have received critical acclaim, while he remains a respected composer in the concert, theater, and dance worlds. Beal's evocative score and theme for the Netflix drama House of Cards received four Emmy Award nominations, winning for best score. Other lauded series featuring his compositions include USA Network's Monk, and HBO's Rome and Carnivale. Film scores include Blackfish, Queen of Versailles, Pollock, and Appaloosa. Beal's concert works have been performed by the St. Louis, Rochester, Pacific, Munich, and Detroit symphonies. Commissions include works for the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Smuin Ballet, Ying Quartet, and Grammy winning guitarist Jason Vieaux. Beal recently conducted the world premiere of House of Cards in Concert with the National Symphony Orchestra. He recently conducted the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestras for recordings and concert premieres of his film score Boston, a feature length documentary about the Boston Marathon.

Mary Kouyoumdjian is a composer with projects ranging from concert works to multimedia collaborations. As a first generation Armenian-American and having come from a family directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, she uses a sonic palette that draws on her heritage, interest in music as documentary, and background in experimental composition to blend the old with the new. She has received commissions for such organizations as Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall, Alarm Will Sound, American Composers Forum/JFund, International Contemporary Ensemble, REDSHIFT, Music of Remembrance, Friction Quartet, and Experiments in Opera. Her documentary work was recently presented by the 2016 NY Philharmonic Biennial, and her residencies include those with Alarm Will Sound, Roulette/The Jerome Fund, Montalvo Arts, and Exploring the Metropolis. Kouyoumdjian is pursuing her D.M.A. in Composition at Columbia University, holds an M.A. from New York University and a B.A. from UC San Diego. She is a co-founder of New Music Gathering.

Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky is the executive editor of Origin Magazine and is a composer, multimedia artist, editor, and author. His DJ Mixer iPad app has seen more than 12 million downloads. In 2012, he was the first artist-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He's produced and composed work for Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore, and scores of artists and award-winning films. Miller's work as a media artist has appeared in the Whitney Biennial; The Venice Biennial for Architecture; the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany; Kunsthalle, Vienna; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; and others. His book Sound Unbound, an anthology of writings on electronic music and digital media is a best-selling title for MIT Press. Miller continues his globe-trotting series of live events playing at festivals from France to Japan to Mexico City, performing solo, with chamber groups and orchestras, and giving talks at prominent universities and conferences.

Nico Muhly is an American composer and sought-after collaborator whose influences range from American minimalism to the Anglican choral tradition. The recipient of commissions from The Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, St. Paul's Cathedral, and others, he has written more than 80 works for the concert stage, including the forthcoming opera Marnie. Muhly is a frequent collaborator with choreographer Benjamin Millepied and, as an arranger, has paired with Sufjan Stevens, Antony and the Johnsons and others. His work for stage and screen include music for the 2013 Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie and scores for films including the Academy Award-winning The Reader. Born in Vermont, Muhly studied composition at the Juilliard School before working as an editor and conductor for Philip Glass. He is part of the artist-run record label Bedroom Community, which released his first two albums, Speaks Volumes (2006) and Mothertongue (2008). He lives in New York City.

Born in "The Diamond state" of Arkansas to a family of musical traveling evangelists, Shara Nova (formerly Worden) moved across America throughout her youth, before studying classical voice at The University of North Texas. After moving to New York City she assembled her chamber pop band, My Brightest Diamond in 2001, subsequently releasing four albums on Asthmatic Kitty Records. Nova has composed works for yMusic, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Young New Yorkers' Chorus, Brooklyn Rider, Nadia Sirota, and Roomful of Teeth among others. Her baroque chamber "p'opera" You Us We All premiered at BAM Next Wave Festival in October 2015. Many composers, songwriters and filmmakers have sought out Nova's voice, including David Lang, David Byrne, The Decemberists, Bryce Dessner, Steve Mackey, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Sufjan Stevens, and Matthew Barney. Nova is a Kresge Fellow, Knights Grant recipient, and a United States Artist fellow.

Toshi Reagon is a talented, versatile singer, composer, musician, curator and producer with a profound ear for sonic Americana-from folk to funk, from blues to rock. While her expansive career has landed her comfortably in residence at Carnegie Hall, the Paris Opera House and Madison Square Garden, you can just as easily find Reagon turning out a music festival, intimate venue or local club. She is a recipient of a NYFA Award for Music Composition, a national Women's History Month Honoree, and was the music director for the National Women's March on Washington, January 2017. Reagon's current touring projects include "Celebrate The Great Women of Blues and Jazz," a 16-piece all women's ensemble of some of New York's best instrumentalists and vocalists. She is currently developing an opera based on Octavia E. Butler's novel Parable of the Sower, debuting fall 2017.

Kamala Sankaram has been praised as "strikingly original" (The New York Times) and "an impassioned soprano with blazing high notes" (The Wall Street Journal.) Recent commissions include Houston Grand Opera's Opera to Go, Washington National Opera's American Opera Initiative, Beth Morrison Projects, HERE Arts Center, and Opera Memphis. Awards, grants and residencies include: Kevin Spacey Artist of Choice, Jonathan Larson Award, NEA ArtWorks, MAP Fund, Opera America, NY IT Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical, the Civilians, HERE, American Lyric Theater, the MacDowell Colony, and the Watermill Center. She has performed and premiered pieces with Beth Morrison Projects, the Anthony Braxton, and the Wooster Group, among others. She is currently the leader of Bombay Rickey, an operatic Bollywood surf ensemble whose debut album was named Best Eclectic Album by the Independent Music Awards Vox Pop. Kamala's opera Thumbprint will receive its west coast premiere at LA Opera this June.

Caroline Adelaide Shaw is a New York-based musician. She is the youngest ever winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music, for her enigmatic composition Partita for 8 Voices. Her career defies categorization-she performs as a violin soloist, chamber musician, and as a vocalist in the Grammy-winning ensemble Roomful of Teeth. Recent commissions include works for Carnegie Hall, the Guggenheim Museum, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra with Jonathan Biss, and mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter. She also frequently collaborates with Kanye West. Currently a doctoral candidate at Princeton, Caroline also studied at Rice and Yale.

For press information, contact Sarah Garvey at sgarvey@bam.org or 718.724.8025; or Ron Gaskill at ron@blakezidell.com or 718-643-9052.

Co-commissioned by Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and WQXR, New York.

Silent Voices is generously supported by Aaron Copland Fund for Music; Amphion Foundation; Charles J. and Irene F. Hamm; Howard Gilman Foundation; the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund; New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, The Fidelity Foundation, The Rogers & Hammerstein Foundation, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, Aaron Copland Fund; The BMI Foundation; The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Silent Voices is also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts; and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Credits

Bloomberg Philanthropies is the Season Sponsor.

Support for the Signature Artist Series provided by Howard Gilman Foundation.

BAM 2017 Winter/Spring Season supporters: Rose M. Badgeley Residuary Charitable Trust; brigittenyc; Betsy and Ed Cohen/Areté Foundation; Con Edison; The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation; Ford Foundation; Forest City Ratner Companies; The Francena T. Harrison Foundation Trust; The Kovner Foundation; MetLife Foundation; The Ambrose Monell Foundation; Henry and Lucy Moses Fund, Inc.; Donald R. Mullen Jr.; Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, Inc.; Onassis Cultural Center NY; Renova; The Jerome Robbins Foundation, Inc.; The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Inc.; The Morris and Alma Schapiro Fund; The SHS Foundation; The Shubert Foundation, Inc.; The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust; The TinMan Fund; Toll Brothers City Living; Viacom; and The Winston Foundation, Inc.

Delta is the Official Airline of BAM. Pepsi is the official beverage of BAM.

Your tax dollars make BAM programs possible through funding from the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The BAM Next Wave Festival is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The BAM facilities are owned by the City of New York and benefit from public funds provided through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs with support from Mayor Bill de Blasio; Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl; the New York City Council including Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito, Finance Committee Chair Julissa Ferreras, Cultural Affairs Committee Chair Jimmy Van Bramer, Councilmember Laurie Cumbo, and the Brooklyn Delegation of the Council; and Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adams. BAM would like to thank the Brooklyn Delegations of the New York State Assembly, Joseph R. Lentol, Delegation Leader; and New York Senate, Senator Velmanette Montgomery.

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