Empire City Men's Chorus to Address Gun Violence and Police Brutality in NYC Concerts

Empire City Men's Chorus, New York City's vanguard of modern men's choral music, presents a one-hour program on March 13 and 14, 2026 at Trinity Lutheran Church that brings two major contemporary choral works into direct conversation with America's ongoing crises of gun violence and police brutality: the New York Premiere of Jamie Powe's Gun Mass and Joel Thompson's The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed. Structured as a choral essay rather than a traditional concert, the program places sacred musical forms in direct dialogue with modern tragedy. The program will also incorporate a live element of public witness through a partnership with Gays Against Guns, whose Human Beings initiative brings remembrance and civic action directly into the performance space.

Gun Mass, composed by Jamie Powe with text by poet Haley Hodges, is a liturgical lament born from the aftermath of the 2022 Uvalde school shooting. Using the structure of the Catholic Mass, the piece replaces divine authority with the terrifying omnipresence of the gun, confronting the ways violence has infiltrated American ritual, language, and belief. Familiar prayers fracture and morph under the weight of grief, naming Columbine, Newtown, Parkland, and Uvalde not as history, but as an ongoing reality. The result is a full standard mass setting for choir that mourns without resolution, insisting that grief must be fully inhabited before hope can be honestly approached. Since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, tracking databases show at least 417 school shootings in the United States resulting in at least 203 deaths and 441 injuries among students, educators, and others - the latest occurring on December 13, 2025, at Brown University, where two students were killed and nine others were wounded.

Joel Thompson's The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed sets the final spoken words of seven Black men whose lives were taken through acts of violence involving law enforcement or civilian armed confrontation. Each movement centers the humanity of its subject through distinct musical language, transforming their last moments into testimony rather than statistics. The men are Kenneth Chamberlain (66), Trayvon Martin (16), Amadou Diallo (23), Michael Brown (18), Oscar Grant (22), John Crawford (22), and Eric Garner (43). Their words "Why do you have your guns out?" "What are you following me for?" "I don't have a gun. Stop shooting." "I can't breathe." form the sole text of the work.

"This is not a concert designed to make anyone feel comfortable," said Vince Peterson, Artistic Director of Empire City Men's Chorus. "These works ask us to sit in grief, to listen without defensiveness, and to recognize the human cost of violence that has become normalized in our country. As artists, we don't get to look away. Our responsibility is to bear witness and to invite our audience to do the same."

As part of the performance, Empire City Men's Chorus will partner with Gays Against Guns (GAG), a national direct-action organization working to end gun violence. Seven GAG members, known as Human Beings, will join the chorus in a silent processional at the start of the concert. Dressed in all white and veiled, the Human Beings serve as living memorials, each representing a life lost to gun violence. During the performance, they will take seats among the audience, reinforcing the inescapable presence of those whose lives have been cut short. An information table hosted by GAG will also be present, offering audiences concrete pathways to civic action, advocacy, and engagement. GAG has a long history of organizing and lobbying efforts, including successful campaigns urging corporations to divest from the National Rifle Association.