ChamberQUEER Presents 2025 Pride Festival: Queer Ancestry In June
Featuring seven performances across venues in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, Queer Ancestry runs from Thursday, June 5 through Sunday, June 15.
By: A.A. Cristi Apr. 24, 2025
ChamberQUEER will present ChamberQUEER 2025: Queer Ancestry, a 2025 Pride Month celebration of queer community, diversity, and excellence in chamber music! Featuring seven performances across venues in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, Queer Ancestry runs from Thursday, June 5 through Sunday, June 15.
Queer Ancestry is the organization's seventh annual Pride month festival and, as in years past, will highlight an exciting variety of queer artists. This year's performances – almost all of which are free – will provide a diversity of affordable cultural programming that platforms queer artists during Pride month.
"In this moment of turmoil and fear, not just for the LGBTQ+ community but for so many marginalized communities in America, we're proud to provide a safe space for people to gather and express themselves," says ChamberQUEER cofounder Brian Mummert. "ChamberQUEER 2025: Queer Ancestry is a chance to learn from our musical forebears, but also an opportunity to consider what kind of ancestors WE hope to be for future generations of queer people."
The festival kicks off Thursday, June 5 when ChamberQUEER teams up with Grammy-winning Boston institution the Handel and Haydn Society for BaroQUEER: Historically Informed, which is also part of the summer-long Carnegie Hall Citywide festival. This unique program, co-curated by Reginald Mobley, Brian Mummert, and Jules Biber, will celebrate queer perspectives that have shaped the early-music revival.
CQ heads to The Metropolitan Museum of Art for BaroQUEER: Here's the Summer, Sprightly, Gay (6/7), a celebration of radical love for Pride featuring CQ cofounders Biber, Mummert, and Danielle Buonaiuto with early music virtuosi Keats Dieffenbach, Rafa Prendergast, and Peter Lim. CQ then gathers at Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance for Tributaries: A Wet Ritual for Witnessing (6/9), a reflective ritual about water, time, absence, and queer ancestors who have been lost and who we commit to remember. The performance-workshop, conceived by Victoria Perrie, Jehan Roberson, Sophie Seita, and Naomi Woo, will also incorporate post-ritual art therapy offered by Dani Minuskin.
The jam-packed final weekend begins with Only This Room (6/13), an immersive, site-specific evening of music and performances at Coffey Street Studio co-curated by inti figgis-vizueta, Anthony R. Green, Mantawoman, Ruth Cunningham, Eve Beglarian, and Buonaiuto. CQ will celebrate Brooklyn Pride at String QUEERtet (6/14) with a rockstar quartet assembled by Biber performing at CQ's birthplace (and favorite queer bar), Branded Saloon. The festival closes Sunday, June 15, with the third installment of CQ's hit community series Show-and-Tell (venue TBA) and Wear Yellow Proudly: Memoirs of a Gaysian, a performance exploring the stories and perspectives of Queer-Asian artists, with vocalists Spencer Britten and Chuanyuan Liu and pianist Jeremy Chan at Red Eye NY.
And, as a special treat, this year CQ will co-present a special pre-festival event with The Rhythm Method – Resistance Strategies – at Americas Society on Friday, May 16. What does resistance sound like? Resistance Strategies gives voice to queer liberation, struggles, and radicalism, featuring work by Cristiano Melli, Abi Prián Gallardo, Leah Asher and Erica Navarro, and Hannah Kendall.
Festival Performance Details
BaroQUEER: Historically Informed
with ChamberQUEER & the Handel and Haydn Society
Part of Carnegie Hall Citywide
Thursday, June 5 at 7:30 PM
at Judson Memorial Church, Manhattan
Free with RSVP
The iconoclastic Brooklyn collective ChamberQUEER teams up with Grammy-winning Boston institution the Handel and Haydn Society for BaroQUEER: Historically Informed, presented by Carnegie Hall Citywide. Co-curated by superstar countertenor Reginald Mobley and CQ cofounders Brian Mummert and Jules Biber, this concert asks: "whose histories inform the way we play and perceive Baroque music, and what would it mean to center performers' voices and stories?" Featuring music by composers ranging from George Frideric Handel and Jean-Baptiste Lully to Julius Eastman and Caroline Shaw, the program celebrates queer perspectives that have shaped the early-music revival and influenced generations of boundary-breaking artists.
There will also be an additional performance of BaroQUEER: Historically Informed in Boston, MA, at UU Urban Ministry (formerly First Church Roxbury) on Friday, May 30 at 7:30pm – full details here.
Featured Performers
- Cassandra Extavour, soprano
- Reginald Mobley, countertenor
- Doug Dodson, countertenor
- Gregório Taniguchi, tenor
- Brian Mummert, baritone
- Dana Whiteside, baritone
- David Dickey, oboe & recorder
- Pablo O'Connell, oboe & recorder
- Rafa Prendergast, violin
- Rebecca Scout Nelson, violin
- Keats Dieffenbach, viola
- Jules Biber, cello
- Thomas Barth, cello
- Andrew Arceci, violone
- Dušan Balarin, theorbo & guitar
- Justin Blackwell, organ & harpsichord
Program
Invocation
- Pauline Oliveros -Tuning Meditation
- Benjamin Britten - String Quartet #2, mvt. 1
I.
- George Frideric Handel - Mi palpita il cor
- Caroline Shaw - other song
- George Frideric Handel - “Love in Her Eyes Sits Playing” from Acis & Galatea
II.
- Florence Price - “Juba” from String Quartet in A minor
- Florence Price, arr. Mummert - Night
- Jean-Baptiste Lully - Act III Sommeil from Atys
- Arcangelo Corelli - Violin Sonata in D minor “La Folia”
III.
- John Dowland - Flow, my tears
- Alma Bazel Androzzo - If I can help somebody
- Beverly Glenn-Copeland, arr. Mummert - Ever New
IV.
- Vicente Lusitano - Quid montes, Musae
- Julius Eastman - Stay On It
BaroQUEER: Here's the Summer, Sprightly, Gay
with Jules Biber, Danielle Buonaiuto, Brian Mummert, Keats Dieffenbach, Rafa Prendergast, and Peter Lim
Saturday, June 7 at 6:30PM and 8PM
at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan
Free with Museum Admission
A celebration of radical love for Pride, Here's the Summer, Sprightly, Gay features CQ cofounders Jules Biber, Danielle Buonaiuto, and Brian Mummert alongside early music virtuosi Keats Dieffenbach, Rafa Prendergast, and Peter Lim performing music by Hildegard von Bingen, Astor Piazzolla, Barbara Strozzi, and more. Join us amongst the Rubens and Rembrandts (name that Rufus Wainwright song that will also appear on the show...) for an explosion of queer joy!
Tributaries: A Wet Ritual for Witnessing
with Victoria Perrie, Jehan Roberson, Sophie Seita, Naomi Woo, and Dani Minuskin
Monday, June 9 at 6PM
at Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Bronx
Post-ritual Art Therapy Offered by Dani Minuski
Tributaries: A Wet Ritual for Witnessing is a ritual about water, about time, about absence, about queer ancestors who have been lost and who we commit to remember. It is a ritual of blessing and complicity, of coming together, of mixing. The performance invites you to remember, reflect, and repeat this ritual, always concluding in tight embrace. Conceived by Victoria Perrie, Jehan Roberson, Sophie Seita, and Naomi Woo for Sembrando Humedad in Mexico City, it has now been reimagined as a nomadic performance-workshop that incorporates post-ritual art therapy, offered by Dani Minuskin, as a space for intentional artmaking to reflect, process, and integrate as a group.
Tributaries was conceived under the auspices of The Hildegard von Bingen Society for Gardening Companions, a project initiated in 2020 by Sophie Seita and Naomi Woo that transplants, reroots, and propagates a queer, feminist gardening society founded by 12th century mystic and musician Hildegard von Bingen, and is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Only This Room
with inti figgis-vizueta, Anthony R. Green, Mantawoman, Ruth Cunningham, Eve Beglarian, and Danielle Buonaiuto
Friday, June 13 at 7:30PM
at Coffey Street Studio, Brooklyn
Tickets are Pay-What-You-Can / $35 Suggested
Only This Room is an immersive, site-specific evening of music and performance collaboratively devised by an intergenerational cohort of queer artists: international composer and performance artist Anthony R. Green, acclaimed yangqin player Mantawoman (Silk Road Ensemble), singer and harpist Ruth Cunningham (Anonymous 4), and ChamberQUEER cofounder and soprano Danielle Buonaiuto Co-conceived with award-winning composers inti figgis-vizueta and Eve Beglarian, Only This Room weaves together words and music of queer ancestors past and present, imagining new ways to create a shared genealogy and manifest a vision for the future.
String QUEERtet
Saturday, June 14 at 2PM
Free – No Reservations Required
Come celebrate Brooklyn Pride with CQ at our birthplace and favorite neighborhood queer bar, Branded Saloon! We'll set up outside for Open Streets; cofounder Jules Biber has assembled a rockstar string QUEERtet to perform everything from Corelli to Chappell Roan - plus we're sure to have a few guest stars drop by too...
Queer Artist Mixer & Show-and-Tell
Sunday, June 15, 2PM - 5PM
Location TBD
Free – Reserve Here
Join us for the third installment of our hit community series Show-and-Tell on our 2025 Pride Festival! Bring your big & small ideas, your curiosity, or just your cute self to meet some new friends and future collaborators – it's sure to be an afternoon teeming with positive vibes and bad-ass queer art. Shoot us an email at hello@ChamberQUEER.org if you know you want to perform or share something (approx. 5-7 minutes long, please!) with the class... Let's chill, chat, and celebrate our brilliant LGBTQ+ colleagues and friends!
Wear Yellow Proudly: Memoirs of a Gaysian
with Spencer Britten, Chuanyuan Liu, and Jeremy Chan
Sunday, June 15 at 8PM
Tickets Start at $10
Memoirs of a Gaysian explores the unique stories and perspectives of Queer-Asian artists. Too often, queerness and Asian identity are compartmentalized—same-sex marriage remains inaccessible in many Asian countries, and traditional family values have long silenced LGBTQ+ voices within the community. Highlighting works by queer and Asian composers and librettists, singers Spencer Britten and Chuanyuan Liu and pianist Jeremy Chan juxtapose songs and arias from the standard repertoire with music by living composers. The beautiful union of queer and Asian identities in composer Dylan Trấn's song cycle Ba, a setting of poetry by Ocean Vuong, intermingles with pieces by Brian C. Armbrust, Huang Ruo, Alice Ping Yee Ho, and more.
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