Community Chorale
The Community Chorale is the heart of Transcend. This group uplifts transgender voices and provides a welcoming environment for anyone who wants to participate in choir, regardless of past experience. Our choir is a space for individuals and voices that may have difficulty fitting into traditional choral groups, so that everyone can develop their musical skills and experience the joy of singing in a choir.
The Chorale is open without audition to anyone who is comfortable learning and performing the repertoire. We began with just eight members in 2021, and have grown to over thirty members over the last five years, and we look forward to continuing to expand our community with new voices and perspectives.
OUR REPERTOIRE: The music we perform covers the spectrum of the 1,000+ year canon of art music, including traditional works as well as modern and/or experimental pieces. We center lesser-known composers, particularly composers from marginalized communities, in our repertoire, and we have commissioned multiple new works written specifically for our voices.
OUR MISSION: Everyone deserves to have a voice. Everyone deserves to have their voice heard. Everyone deserves a welcoming place where they can express themselves and communicate with others musically. Singing together is a human right, and our mission lies in extending that right to everyone in the trans and gender-expansive community.
Our director
Hannah Cai Sobel
Hannah Cai Sobel is a NYC based vocalist, conductor, and composer, inspired wholeheartedly by the human experience. They draw on the modes and textures of early chant and polyphony in their own writing, forcing age-old techniques to “crash headfirst” into contemporary practices and harmonies. Hannah has music directed and conducted every opera they’ve written. Their goal is to make opera accessible for everyone - in their operas, Frog and Toad, Brooklyn Bound L, and What's it trying to feel like?, they provided debut opportunities for emerging singers. Both operas were presented in ways that were accessible to first time opera goers and they are very proud that a large percentage of their audience members were first time (and not last time!) opera goers. They are the co-president of their opera company, Granite Planet, which aims to promote unconventional operas in unconventional venues, and the conductor for Transcend, NYC’s trans and gender nonconforming community chorale. They love community organizing and they co-host monthly round-singing parties with Lili Tobias (if you’re reading this, you’re invited!) Hannah is a lover of all cats, most hyperbolic triangle groups, and probably you.
Photography by JP Pacheco