The centerpiece of this concert is Caroline Shaw’s To The Hands, a work that takes the text of Emma Lazarus’ poem The New Colossus and intermingles it with the chorale Ad Manus from Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri in poignant ways. Filling out the program are works by six other acclaimed contemporary composers, including Jake Runestad’s The Peace of Wild Things, David Lang’s If I Am Silent, and Karen Siegel’s To Be Free, an adaptation of the Shaker/Copland tune Simple Gifts.

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A Gift To Be Free

Broadway Presbyterian Church

The first in a multi-year series, this concert centers on Leipzig, Germany, the city where Johann Sebastian Bach lived and worked for the last 27 years of life and produced many of his greatest compositions. The program features Bach’s music alongside the works of those who preceded and followed him, spanning the Baroque through the Romantic eras. The chorus will return to Bach’s cantata Jesu, meine Freude, an audience and singer favorite, and perform works by Schütz, Rheinberger, Reger, and the siblings Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn.

Leipzig Connections

To celebrate her 57 seasons leading New Amsterdam Singers, Music Director Clara Longstreth will return to contemporary American choral works that are among her personal favorites. Those include works by Ben Moore, Michael Dellaira, Ronald Perera, Matthew Harris, Abbie Betinis, and Robert Paterson. Plus, we’ll present four works that are new to the chorus, all by notable Black composers. Those include Undine Smith Moore’s setting of Langston Hughes’ stirring poem, “I, Too, Sing America,” and Marques Garrett’s 2023 work, Lucis, Creator Optime, which the composer describes as having “a percussive drive that accompanies elongated chant melody…harmonized by the voices around it.”

A Few of My Favorite Things

The centerpiece of this concert is the world premiere of a newly commissioned work by composer Philip Lasser. His L’Abécédaire de Huon, Roi de Cambrai  sets a series of 13th century French poems that follow the letters of the alphabet. Continuing with works in French, the chorus will perform a piece by Haitian American composer Sydney Guillaume that set a poem by his father, Gabriel T. Guillaume: Le Dernier Voyage, a meditation on the joys and pains of life. Also on the program are Gabriel Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Romancero Gitano, featuring poems by Federico Garcia Lorca and classical guitar.

New Amsterdam Singers

29 - 31 May, 2026

A Gift To Be Free

13 - 15 Mar, 2026

Leipzig Connections

New Amsterdam Singers