St John’s in the Village

Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the words of the Founding Fathers feel newly urgent. Gathering to hear American music, in in a city that has always stood for pluralism and possibility and in a neighborhood that was described by poet Mascha Kaléko as “the melting pot in the melting pot” is itself an act of faith — in what the Republic has been, and in what it still can be.

In “We the People,” Poetica Musica draws on music from America’s first 25 decades – including works by Robert Beaser, Aaron Copland, William Bolcom, Hall Johnson, and others — to trace a thread of distinctly American expression across generations and styles.

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.

Each year, The Village Trip brings together composers with deep ties to Greenwich Village and the East Village for an evening celebrating Village Voices. This year's program draws on an extraordinary range of voices — and histories – featuring premieres by Scott Wheeler, and Ella Milch-Sheriff, as well as new settings of Herman Melville by Akemi Naito and Kile Smith.