Pride: Hand in Hand

Join Juventas New Music Ensemble for a concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising and launch of the modern gay rights movement, with new chamber music by LGBTQ+ composers.

“From Tchaikovsky to Copland, many gay composers have been classical music ‘luminaries'” says Junventas Artistic Director Oliver Caplan, “and yet our field rarely performs work speaking to the LGBTQ+ experience, or honors these composers’ contributions as a whole.” Among the featured works is Dennis Tobenski’s Only Air, dedicated to LGBTQ teenagers who took their own lives because of anti-gay bullying. There are five movements each honoring a teenager who died by suicide after being bullied for being gay: Justin Aaberg, Seth Walsh, Asher Brown, Zach Harrington, and Tyler Clementi. Another piece, Ingrid Stölzel’s The Voice of the Rain, takes its title and inspiration from the great American poet Walt Whitman. The work compares the cyclical nature of life to the creative process.