Queen Esther to Present SONGS FOR UNREQUITED LOVERS at Symphony Space

Queen Esther will bring Songs For Unrequited Lovers to Symphony Space on Thursday, November 12, 2026, at 7:30 p.m. The 75- to 90-minute performance will feature Queen Esther on vocals, joined by Sharp Radway on piano, Brandi Disterheft on double bass, Steven Williams on drums, and Jon Beshay on tenor saxophone.

Songs For Unrequited Lovers is a new song cycle from Queen Esther that explores love outside of the usual romantic script. Inspired by Chuck Palahniuk's line, 'The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person,' this project considers the ache of emotional asymmetry: the love that arrives too late, the love that lands on the wrong person, the love that remains unfinished, or survives only as memory, longing, fantasy, grief and grace.

These are not 'boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl' love songs. They're about the past that never happened, the beloved who could not stay, the person who could not receive what was being offered, and the strange mercy of carrying love even after the relationship itself has vanished. The idea was that love so often misses its mark. You want someone who cannot receive what you're offering. Someone wants you when you cannot give yourself to them. You meet the right person at the wrong moment. You realize what someone meant after they're gone. Or the relationship disappears, but the love doesn't.

This gives a much richer landscape than simply 'songs about heartbreak.' The subject becomes the asymmetry of love itself: the terrible, beautiful fact that love is not a transaction and therefore has no obligation to balance. Songs for Unrequited Lovers isn't really a song cycle about rejection. It's about the ways love becomes uneven, mistimed, misdirected, unanswered, transformed, or impossible - and what that imbalance does to us.