Mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski and pianist Melinda Lee Masur will open the 2026 Chelsea Music Festival on June 20, featuring a program focused on the American immigrant experience and the poetry of Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar.
The opening night performance is scheduled for 7 p.m. at St. Paul’s German Church, located at 315 West 22nd Street. Tickets for the event start at $92.55, and a reception will follow the concert.
The program pairs the works of American-born composer Aaron Copland and Viennese immigrant Erich Wolfgang Korngold. It will also feature New York premieres by composers Reinaldo Moya, Frederick Piket, Mark Carlson, and Steven Ward.
Additionally, the evening will include the New York City premiere of Libby Larsen’s “This Unbearable Stillness: Songs from the Balcony,” a song cycle celebrating the everyday lives of Arab American women. Spiritual arrangements by Damien Sneed will connect the two halves of the performance, including a setting of Hughes’s poem “I Dream a World” scored for string quartet and piano.
The performing ensemble for the evening includes Osowski, Masur, violinists Claire Bourg and Yuyu Ikeda, and cellist Angela Lee.
The programmed repertoire includes Carlson’s “III. Stars -The Dream Keeper,” Copland’s “Three Old American Songs,” Korngold’s “Three Songs,” Moya’s “DREAM Songs,” Piket’s “The Dream Keeper,” Sneed’s “All Night, All Day” and “I Dream A World,” and Ward’s “Invitation to Love.”
Established in 2010, the Chelsea Music Festival presents classical, contemporary, and jazz programming in non-traditional concert spaces such as art galleries, public squares, schools, and churches. The festival emphasizes commissions by composers outside the traditional western canon and highlights emerging voices, particularly women and people of color.
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