QUO’s 2026-2027 Season
| “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” — James Baldwin Queer Urban Orchestra, the only LGBTQ+ orchestra in the Northeast, presents its 2026-2027 season, Hear the People Sing, a powerful expression of queer resistance in the face of oppression and violence. Across history and into the present day, queer resistance has been sustained by perseverance, passion, and creativity — the same forces that animate orchestral music itself. In a moment marked by rising violence, political backlash, and renewed threats to LGBTQ+ lives and visibility, this ambitious season asserts music as a vital form of resistance. Featuring music from Beethoven to Iván Enrique Rodríguez and Shostakovich to inti figgis-vizueta, the season brings together canonical masterworks and vital contemporary voices. Inimitable soloists include QUO flutist Bianca Morris, and the orchestra is led by Artistic Director David Bloom, Associate Conductor Derek Weagle. Together, these programs confront injustice, affirm identity, and insist on the power of collective voice. “QUO’s programming is journalistic: we want to create a snapshot of queer experience today. Being queer is so beautifully multifarious, and so our programming embraces a huge breadth of voices and creative lenses. What’s more, we want to present current day experience in the inspiring lineage of our queer ancestors. This season, we honor the fight that so many have waged for love, dignity, and survival.” — David Bloom, Artistic Director “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” — Alice Walker |
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September 19: QUOtets XXI |
March 12 QUOfest: Liberation as Resistance |
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October 16 & 17: Joy as Resistance |
March 13 QUOfest: Fly Free Forever |
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December 12: Hope as Resistance |
March 13 QUOfest: Existence as Resistance |
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January TBD: QUOtets plays Originals |
May 8: Music as Resistance |
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June 12; Hear the People Sing |
Saturday September 19: QUOtets XXI
By popular demand, this season features two QUOtets performances. The creativity and artistry of Queer Urban Orchestra’s musicians is on full display in this evening of chamber music, selected and performed by groups of QUO musicians.
Venue: Church of the Village
Friday October 16 and Saturday October 17: Joy as Resistance
“The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them.” — Audre Lorde
Queer Urban Orchestra opens its 2026-2027 season with music that meets adversity with the power of joy. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, written amid political repression and personal isolation, presents a radical imagination of a world grounded in dignity, community, and shared voice. A fabulous cast of vocal soloists and choirs sing a new, inclusive update of the text for Schiller’s Ode to Joy.
We are joined for this performance by the Brooklyn Treble Choir and the Empire City Men’s Chorus.
Saturday December 12: Hope as Resistance
“Hope will never be silent.” — Harvey Milk
With music from uncertain times, Queer Urban Orchestra threads together an evening wherein hope is not aspirational but deliberate and sustaining. In his sweeping Fifth Symphony, Sibelius draws on the traditional music and elemental beauty of his homeland, asserting Finland’s strength at the height of Russian fear tactics to eliminate Finnish autonomy. Taking its title from a James Baldwin quote, Iván Enrique Rodríguez’s Metaphor for Power confronts structures of authority with urgency and imagination. QUO flutist Bianca Morris, winner of the orchestra’s Concerto Competition, performs the Reinecke Flute Concerto.
Venue: Church of the Holy Apostles
Late January: QUOtets Plays Originals
This special edition of QUOtets celebrates the rich talent and collaborative spirit at the heart Queer Urban Orchestra’s membership. Composers from within the orchestra and chamber ensembles of soloists from QUO team up to create a concert experience consisting completely of original queer repertoire, created just for this concert!
Venue: Judson Memorial Church
Friday March 12 QUOfest: Liberation as Resistance
“To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true.” — Bayard Rustin
A chamber orchestra of solists from Queer Urban Orchestra presents a multimedia evening of new and recent music by queer composers. In the world premiere of QUO member Jacob Szilagi‘s Fly Free Forever, music, projected images, and narration combine to tell the inspiring true story of Flaco, the owl who escaped his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo in 2023, made a new home in the city, and captured the imagination of New Yorkers. Choral ensemble Khôra Consort joins QUO for the premiere of QUO Associate Conductor Derek Weagle’s Stabat Mater, which reimagines the historic hymn as a contemporary act of witness and solidarity. che ali’s Beauty is brief and violent transforms the emotional impact of collective trauma of racial violence into a striking musical journey from explosive resonance toward hard-won hope.
Saturday March 13 (3 pm): QUOfest Family Concert: Fly Free Forever
“We are not what other people say we are. We are who we know ourselves to be, and we are what we love.” — Laverne Cox
Fly Free Forever is a multimedia family concert tells the inspiring true story of Flaco, the owl who escaped his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo in 2023, made a new home in the city, and captured the imagination of New Yorkers. Twenty musicians from Queer Urban Orchestra play music by QUO member Jacob Szilagi as hand-drawn projections and narration combine for an unforgettable experience, perfect for children ages 6-12, and their whole families!
Saturday March 13 (8 pm) QUOfest: Existence as Resistance
“Never forget that your survival is a revolutionary act.” — Leslie Feinberg
In a program of emotional truth and courage to be fully oneself, Queer Urban Orchestra performs the New York premiere of Dora Pejačević‘s lyrical and brazen Symphony, the first symphony by any Croation composer. Written as she was volunteering as a nurse in World War I, this self-taught composer turned to music to cope with the horrors she witnessed. Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Suite not only includes some of his lushest music, but also captures the ballet’s refusal of erasure, affirming that persistence is a strong resistance.
Saturday May 8: Music as Resistance
The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is — it’s to imagine what is possible.” — bell hooks
Queer Urban Orchestra features composers who rely on music not as an escape, but as an essential act of resistance. Few works epitomize the power of music as resistance more than Shostakovich‘s monumental Fifth Symphony, a potent, coded message against Soviet oppression and violence. QUO also presents ts U.S. premiere of inti figgis-vizueta’s Quipucamayoc, inspired an Andean tradition of weaving numerical records, poetry, and myths into textiles. The knowledge of how to interpret them was destroyed by colonists, but her music builds a living cypher. The evening opens with the world premiere of a QUO-commissioned work by Yoshi Weinberg, whose work has been described as “transcendent, emotional, and intimate” (Sparks and Wiry Cries).
Sunday June 12 Pride Gala: Hear the People Sing!
“I’m not missing a moment of this — it’s the revolution!” — Sylvia Rivera
In its sparkling Pride Gala, Queer Urban Orchestra’s season culminates in a jubilant celebration of collective voice, courage, and community. We open with Omar Thomas‘ tribute to Sylvia Rivera, Mother of a Revolution. A quartet of solo strings from QUO takes center stage in music by Jessie Montgomery, the orchestra features the fresh imagination of the winner of QUO’s 2027 Vanguard Composers Competition, and music by Bernstein roots the evening in queer political history. Plus, stay tuned for the announcement of an extra special guest star!
Venue: St. Peter’s Church
