Past Seasons

Still the Same Love: A Pride Concert with TRANScend

June 13, 2026

This year, TRANScend celebrates Pride by showing love to transgender & queer composers, and sharing their love with you!

The TRANScend Chorale presents music inspired by our own members thoughts on queer love, featuring an incredible lineup of trans composers and arrangers including Michael Bussowitz Quarm, Hope Salmonson, and our very own Atlas A. Lee-Reid. The repertoire covers the full range of queer love from the passionate to the bittersweet, subtextual, and platonic, and includes an original piece by our Chorale director Hannah Cai Sobel. 

Our Ambassadors ensemble showcases queer love across the ages through liturgical, pop, and new music. From Dominique Phinot, a Franco-Flemish Renaissance composer who was executed for being openly gay, to Sam Smith, the Ambassadors highlight the way queer love thrives in music. Their modern pieces include songs from Suzanne McCoy’s queer musical, “Here I Am,” as well as an original composition by David Sisco & L Morgan Lee, based on interviews with our singers.

Across all the ages of queerness, our love for each other remains constant. Whether in a closet or in a parade, no matter the political environment or our personal hardships, our love keeps us alive and connects us. It’s still the same love. 

Feast of Corpus Christi at St. John’s in the Village

June 3, 2026

Pride Eve

May 30, 2026

TRANScend returns to St. John the Divine to celebrate Pride Eve with the Greedy Peasant!

Ain't Got Time to Die! - An Uplifting Community Concert

May 16, 2026

TRANScend & Lavender Light present a musical cultural exchange of gospel & queerness! Featuring the work of Hall Johnson, noted by Bayard Rustin as one of his own gay role models, this collaboration seeks to uplifting Johnson’s legacy in our shared communities, and highlight the queerness that has largely been erased from his legacy.

Winter 2025:
Wintergrace

Dec 20, 2025

This holiday season, TRANScend offers a moment of grace: for the things we meant to do, tried to do, forgot to. For the postponed resolutions, half-finished projects, the triumphs and the losses. Join us as we take a breath, admire the lights & ornaments, and wish for a little snow to even out our imperfections. This is: Wintergrace.

In this spirit of grace, TRANScend explores a variety of classical & folk songs, including unique settings of familiar tunes, modern choral arrangements honoring the winter season, and a brand-new piece composed by our conductor, Hannah Cai-Sobel, and arranged collaboratively by the Chorale. Taking its name from an Appalachian arrangement by Kevin Siegfried, our program features pieces by Oliver Tarney, Reena Esmail, Ola Gjeilo and others as a meditation on the profound beauty of winter, and the comfort we can provide each other through the darkest time of year.

Transcend at Queer Voices Sung

November 11, 2025

Queer Voices Sung is a monthly concert series dedicated to showcasing queer excellence through classical music. Every month of 2025, we will be presenting works by queer composers sung by a diverse group of LGBTQ+ singers ending in a reception for our community. Strength in Unity, Joy in Community. Concerts are free to attend. Follow us on Instagram @queervoicessung for updates.

See the TRANScend Ambassadors at Queer Voices Sung this November! We’ll be performing repertoire from our Pride Concert, which was sadly canceled due to Covid-19. Come join us at St. John’s in the Village to hear a selection of “decadent, degenerate, and downright dangerous” music from 1930s Germany.

Summer 2025:
Decadent, Degenerate & Downright Dangerous

This concert was cancelled due to Covid-19

"Decadent," "degenerate" and "downright dangerous!" (Sen. Joe McCarthy) are all labels used to describe the music, composers and performers featured on our annual Pride concert. Our program starts in Germany, where the Ambassadors follow the path of musical suppression from 1934 to its inevitable conclusion in World War 2. We'll explore the degenerate sounds of music by the Comedian Harmonists, Hans Eisler, Kurt Weill, Max Bruch and others, including the world premiere of a new arrangement of Unter dayne vayse shtern, written for TRANScend by composer Steve Cohen.

The Community Chorale cross the Atlantic, where a more diffuse -- but no less strange parallel -- of Nazi artistic repression occurred in America, during the 1950s/60s. This will showcase music by American-Jewish composers Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, as well as folk music from musicians like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Harry Belafonte and more.

This project is made possible in part with funds from Creative Engagement, a regrant program(s) supported by the funding agencies The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the Howard Gilman Foundation, and administered by LMCC.

Pride Eve at The Cathedral of St John the Divine

May 31, 2025

Pride Eve 2025 returns better than ever with expanded offerings, including an evening of crafts, color, and pageantry. The night will begin with a cocktail hour where visitors are invited to tour the Cathedral, mingle, and visit different craft stations, as well as enter a raffle to win a variety of prizes.

Returning after a sold-out show last year, our Host, the Greedy Peasant, will then take to the stage for a 45-minute performance culminating in the illumination of the Cathedral in its annual rainbow lights. All are welcome for this special occasion, with monochromatic fanciful dress encouraged. The suggested colors include red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and pink. Tassels also implied.

Comfort & Joy: A Musical Solstice Celebration with TRANScend

For millennia, people all over the world have recognized the winter solstice as an important astronomical occurrence and celebrated through rituals to ward off the dark and cold, until the return of the sun. Centuries-old solstice traditions continue to influence the holidays we celebrate now.

The music we'll be presenting for this concert comes from a broad array of cultural and spiritual traditions, including several wonderful examples of syncretism between cultures. The includes works from First Nations composers Alex Vollant and Russell Wallace, a new work by Reena Esmail, based on the Raag Ahir Bhairav, along with Leonardo Leo's baroque Magnificat, Salamone Rossi's setting of Shir Lama'alot and many others.

Hear My Voice: A Pride Concert

Whether evoking delight in spring, the transcendent joy of love or the agony of loss, choral music has beautifully illustrated the human experience for centuries. We’re kicking off Pride Week in NYC with Hear My Voice — a concert celebrating the shared human experience in music with a program that includes new music from our composer in residence, Hannah Cai Sobel, as well as contemporary and traditional pieces from the Western choral canon, including John Michael Trotta, Alice Parker, Dietrich Buxtehude and others. We’ll be joined by singer-songwriter and trans health activist Dallas Denny, singer and actor Kyr Siegel, and film director Shon Keane for an unforgettable evening of queer musical goodness!

Season of Light: A Holiday Concert

The winter solstice, with its dark chill, has produced festivals and holidays centered on light and warmth around the world. Different cultures celebrate in different ways, but they share a common theme: music warms the soul and offers hope for the cold days ahead. Join us for a holiday concert celebrating the solstice, with music from sacred and secular choral traditions for this season of light.

Sing Me to Heaven: A Pride Concert

In celebration of Pride, TRANScend offers a choral concert celebrating the moments in life that uplift our spirits and bring us closer to each other. The program includes the world premiere of a new piece, i am mine, by Dylan Trần, as well as music by Tchaikovsky, Uusberg Part and Samuel Webbe.

Stations of the Lost: A Trans Requiem

Premiering for Trans Day of Remembrance, STATIONS OF THE LOST is a secular/gnostic requiem, a new theatre piece created by Dr. Felix Graham in collaboration with TRANScend, New York's trans/gender-expansive vocal ensemble, and Randy Polumbo, visual artist. The requiem, in oratorio form, will be performed alongside an installation of 14 panels, replacing the traditional stations of the cross with commemorative art pieces honoring the lives of trans artists (both past and present).

Good Night, Dear Heart: Songs for Parting

From simple goodnights to heartbreaking goodbyes, our rituals of parting are immortalized in music. Transcend's spring sonic landscape explores these traditions from Renaissance to modern times, including lesser known pieces from the Russian Orthodox liturgical tradition and new works from Dylan Trần and David Solomons.

Christ's Mass Then & Now: A Millennial Holiday Concert

A program of contemplative holiday music, featuring motets & carols from a thousand years of Christmas liturgical music. Repertoire includes chant by Hildegard de Bingen, modern settings of ancient melodies, and a new motet from Venezuelan composer Cesar Carillo.