2026 Music

Paul Robeson — singer, athlete, actor, activist — embodied all the promise of America at its best. He used his art as a weapon of justice and, as a global citizen, he spoke truth to power, heedless of the personal cost. “Artists are the gatekeepers of truth,” he once said. “We are civilization’s radical voice.” Fifty years after his passing, his magnificent voice still rings out, entreating us all to fight the good fight. Bass-baritone James C Martin, with Lynn Raley at the piano, celebrates a true American patriot with a program of Robeson’s best-loved songs and his bravest words, spoken in a tumultuous time when many turned against him. The program also features a world première by David Amram with Augusta Read Thomas, Chen Shih-hui, Erik Santos, Robert Wellington Pound, and Maria Thompson Corley and others setting words by Paul’s friend and fellow activist Langston Hughes honoring Robeson.

Since their New York debut in 2011, the Horszowski Trio – Jesse Mills, violin; Ole Akahoshi, cello; Rieko Aizawa, piano – has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, the Far East, and India, earning a reputation as one of the most vital chamber ensembles of their generation. The centerpiece of their concert is the U.S. premiere of 25 Decades, a piano trio by William Kentner Anderson — composer, guitarist, and Director of Classical and New Music for The Village Trip — performed alongside Brahms' Piano Trio No. 2 in C major, Op 87, a pairing that sets Anderson's new work in direct conversation with the Romantic tradition it both inherits and unsettles.

Born into Gilded Age luxury, Cole Porter defied family expectations to forge a life in popular music, trading classical expectations for exotic melodies, harmonic innovation and modern rhythms coupled with sophisticated, urbane lyrics packed with cultural references, sexual innuendo, and complex rhymes. In so doing, Porter wrote the songs that form the backbone of the Great American Songbook – timeless numbers that have transcended generations. Join award-winning singer and arranger Janie Barnett as she turns Porter’s sophisticated classics on their head, reinterpreting them with raw, rootsy soul.

The Village Trip presents “Women's Work,” an evening of music and poetry that explores the tension between the external demands placed on women and the rich creative interior lives they have always sustained. Central to the program is a world première from Greenwich Village composer Kitty Brazelton. The program also draws on works by Liz Queler (The Edna Project), Missy Mazzoli, Shoko Suzuki, Ann Southam, and Whitney George, alongside texts by Eleanor Roosevelt, Marcella Remund, Edna St Vincent Millay and Anne Lovering Rounds.

Join legendary multi-instrumentalist and "Renaissance man of American music" David Amram and his septet for a musical journey celebrating the legacies of Miles Davis and John Coltrane in their centennial year. This performance is more than a tribute: It is a first-hand account of jazz history from an artist who lived it. In the 1950s, Amram worked with the great bands of Charles Mingus, Oscar Pettiford, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton and his own quartet. He was well acquainted with both Miles and Trane, two giants from the vibrant New York scene of the 1950s, and he brings a unique perspective to their transformative works.

Four composers from diverse backgrounds – Samuel Adler, Victoria Bond, Dina Koston, and Nehemiah Luckett – offer very personal interpretations of the dreams that have lured immigrants from all around the world to America’s shores. Performed by Ensemble Cygnus and singers.

An intimate evening in the company of Allen Shawn, author, pianist, and composer whose six-year sojourn in the West Village marked a creative turning point when – influenced by his friendship with clarinetist Benny Goodman – he began blending classical music with elements of jazz. His lively music is characterized by emotional directness and an openness to a variety of idioms. “Notes from a Life” is a sonic diary featuring chamber pieces from across four decades by this multifaceted musician celebrated for his “distinctly urban energy.”

The Village Trip is proud to be working with Rod MacDonald and Raymond Micek to co-present The Greenwich Village Folk Festival at 40, a very special all-star celebration of the rich legacy of folk music in the Village. In the 1960s, the sounds of the folk revival reverberated around the world, but the roots of that revival can be traced back to the 1940s when the neighborhood was a cheap, bohemian refuge for radicals, artists, and writers – among them Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly, both of whom sang in the Great Hall at Cooper Union where the folk community will gather once more to raise its voice in song.