New Amsterdam Singers, led by Music Director Clara Longstreth, will present “The World of Dreams” on Thursday, March 16, 2023, at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, March 19, 2023, at 4:00 p.m. at Broadway Presbyterian Church at Broadway and 114th Street. This program of choral works by 20th and 21st century American composers will feature the world premiere of Charting the World, a newly commissioned piece for chorus and five instruments by the acclaimed Los Angeles composer Dale Trumbore.

Two other works will receive their New York premieres: Judith Shatin’s La Frontera and Carol Barnett’s Most Holy Night. Shatin wrote La Frontera in 2021 on a poem by an undocumented youth in response to the tragic incarceration of immigrants at the U.S. southern border. Barnett’s Most Holy Night was commissioned by the Minneapolis ensemble VocalEssence in 2015 as part of a project called Quilt Songs, a cycle of settings of poems inspired by quilts by artist Kay McCarthy.

The program celebrates American composers who have chosen to set great poetry to music. In Charting the World, Trumbore turned to two poems by contemporary poet Diane Thiel that capture the wonder of childhood. Inspired by a quilt entitled “Moon River,” Barnett chose an atmospheric ode to the night by early 20th century English-Franco poet Hilaire Belloc.

For her 2008 To Sit and Dream, composer Rosephanye Powell set lines from a Langston Hughes poem that invites listeners to reach toward dreams of a more just society. Louise Talma wrote Let’s Touch the Sky in 1952 for chorus, flute, oboe, and bassoon on a typically nonsensical poem by e.e. cummings. The chorus will also perform works by Stephen Paulus and Alice Parker.

Also appearing on the program are musicians from The Harlem Chamber Players, marking the ensemble’s second joint concert with New Amsterdam Singers. The Harlem Chamber Players will perform Spiritual Fantasy by Frederick C. Tillis, a string quartet based on spirituals, including Nobody Knows the Trouble I See and Wade in the Water.

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