JUNETEENTH: FREEDOM HAS NO BORDERS to Premiere at Joe's Pub
Kalea Leverette and Carla R. Stewart star in the 75-minute concert at the Public Theater.
Joe's Pub will present Juneteenth: Freedom Has No Borders, a one-night concert of songs from Juneteenth, The Musical, a new work with book, music, and lyrics by composer, poet, and playwright Darrel Alejandro Holnes on Friday, June 19 at 9:30pm (doors open at 9pm) at Joe's Pub (425 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10003) as part of Carnegie Hall's United in Sound: America at 250.
Tickets ($36) are available for advance purchase at https://publictheater.org/performances-jp/2026/j/juneteenth-the-musical-in-concert-by-darrel-alejandro-holnes/. The performance will run approximately 75 minutes, with no intermission.
Juneteenth, The Musical tells the story of the first Juneteenth through one love that refused to die. On a Texas plantation in the final days of slavery, Anna and Elijah fall in love - and are torn apart, he fleeing north to join the Union Army, she escaping south to Mexico, which had abolished slavery decades before the United States. Their two roads to freedom - one north, one south - converge in a story of liberation, love, and resistance. The score braids African American, Mexican-American, Mexican, and Creole traditions into one living inheritance, weaving gospel and folk-blues with corrido, conjunto, and zydeco.
"Freedom didn't travel in a straight line, and it didn't only run north," said Juneteenth, The Musical creator Darrel Alejandro Holnes. "As with most of my work, this concert is about the people history forgot - and the love that outlasted everything done to keep two lovers apart."
The concert stars Kalea Leverette (Broadway's Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) as Anna, Carla R. Stewart (Broadway's The Color Purple and TINA: The Tina Turner Musical) as Mama Rue, Claudia Logan (BET's Diarra from Detroit) as The Angel D. Vine, Chafik Jay as Elijah, and Justin Anthony as Sancho, with Background Vocals by Sabrina Spraggins and a special guest appearance by Amyra León, the Harlem-born vocalist, composer, and multidisciplinary artist whose work centers Black liberation and communal healing.
Music direction, arrangements, and orchestrations are by Balint Varga, leading a band of Broadway and touring musicians: Asher Denburg (piano; Broadway's Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride, National Tour of A Beautiful Noise), Yuka Tadano (bass; Broadway's Swept Away, Suffs, A Beautiful Noise), Yotam Ben-Or (harmonica; Broadway's Floyd Collins), Josh Bailey (drums and percussion; Broadway's & Juliet and The Outsiders), and Lou Garrett (guitar and banjo; National Tour of The Book of Mormon). The concert is produced by De Mangue Productions and Miss Mason Productions (Roger Q. Mason).
Darrel Alejandro Holnes is an Afro-Panamanian American composer, playwright, and poet whose work moves across theater, music, and the page. His work for the stage includes Black Feminist Video Game (The Civilians; 59E59; Center Theatre Group; Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Bolero (The Sol Project's Sol Fest, Stages Houston's Sin Muros Festival), and Bayano (National Black Theatre's I Am Soul Residency; Eugene O'Neill Theater Center finalist; Carnegie Hall's Nuestros Sonidos Festival). He is the author of the poetry collections Stepmotherland (University of Notre Dame Press), winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, and Migrant Psalms (Northwestern University Press). A National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow with residencies including MacDowell, he is the founder of the Candela Playwrights Summer Fellowship. darrelholnes.com
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