A large work gathers people into its gravity — singers, players, audience — all pulled into a shared orbit for an hour or more, until time seems briefly suspended. When the final chord fades, what lingers isn’t perfection but presence: the memory of having stood inside something vast and human, built out of breath and trust. For those who plan the seasons ahead, the challenge is to risk that gravity — to make space for the kind of work that can transform not just a concert, but everyone who takes part in it. That, more than mastery, feels like the point.
Every choir deserves, at least once, to feel the world widen like that.
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Joshua Shank is a collaborator who’s lived on both U.S. coasts and borders. When he’s not busy thinking up new musical ideas, burning lentils in the pursuit of vegetarian mastery, or cackling at cinematic disasters with his husband, he’s advocating for marginalized voices through his work.
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“January” from A Calendar of Light by Dale Trumbore; performed by the Young New Yorker’s ChorusTreble Ensemble, Alex Canovas, conductor.
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