The GRAMMY Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus (Founder & Artistic Director Dianne Berkun Menaker) presents the world premiere of Port(al), an ambitious new project—a performance installation, and a living museum—that continues to expand Brooklyn Youth Chorus’s dynamic vision for its live programming (beginning May 1, 2025). Engaging young singers in world-class art-making and bringing their ideas to the center of the creative process, Port(al) considers the history of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the connective possibilities of port cities, in tandem with choristers’ anxieties about and hopes for our present and future. A site-specific work reawakening history in the goliath raw space of the Navy Yard’s Agger Fish building, Port(al) brings co-composer Paola Prestini (co-founder and artistic director of National Sawdust, and a close friend of Brooklyn Youth Chorus), co-composer and co-librettist Jad Abumrad (founder and former co-host of Radiolab), and multidisciplinary director and co-librettist Jessica Grindstaff (a co-founder of Phantom Limb Company) into groundbreaking collaboration with Brooklyn Youth Chorus.
Vividly evoking and honoring Brooklyn’s ghosts, Port(al) spins oral histories from recently passed figures like historian Howard Zinn (who worked as an apprentice in the Navy Yard) and activist Clarence L. Irving, Sr. (who had been a riveter in the Navy Yard) into stunning compositions; looks into the legacy of machinist and drag king Rusty Brown; and considers the power of the first live radio singing performance, by mezzo soprano Eugenia Farrar. Reflected in this swirl of text and song, performance, guided audio tour, and séance are the early prison ships that floated in Wallabout Bay and left over 11,500 victims in their wake, all buried near Navy Yard in the early 1800s; Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”; women’s, immigrants’, and Black Americans’ labor during wartime; the rise of queer culture into the public eye; and more. Ebbing, flowing, and interweaving throughout the piece are the voices of the youth chorus speaking to their relationship to their very own time and place, and their future.
Port(al) is the first evening-length work commissioned, developed, produced, and presented entirely by Brooklyn Youth Chorus—and their first major work built for an unconventional performance venue. Port(al) boldly brings Berkun Menaker’s vision for the Chorus into new interdisciplinary territory. Much like Prestini’s earlier work with Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Aging Magician, Port(al) sets the strange fluidity and scope of time to song; and like the meticulously researched documentaries and oral histories Abumrad has crafted for radio, it transports audiences to textured understandings of individual stories and moments. Grindstaff, whose works have considered specific places’ (Antarctica, Fukushima, or the site of the world’s oldest living tree) relationships to a changing globe, here turns her lens on her own city.
Creative Team
BROOKLYN YOUTH CHORUS
Dianne Berkun Menaker, Founder and Artistic Director
Music by Paola Prestini and Jad Abumrad
Libretto by Jad Abumrad and Jessica Grindstaff
Directed by Jessica Grindstaff
Co-Created by Dianne Berkun Menaker, Paola Prestini, Jad Abumrad, and Jessica Grindstaff
Click HERE to purchase tickets. Please note, tickets will go on-sale February 2025.
The GRAMMY Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus (Founder & Artistic Director Dianne Berkun Menaker) presents the world premiere of Port(al), an ambitious new project—a performance installation, and a living museum—that continues to expand Brooklyn Youth Chorus’s dynamic vision for its live programming (beginning May 1, 2025). Engaging young singers in world-class art-making and bringing their ideas to the center of the creative process, Port(al) considers the history of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the connective possibilities of port cities, in tandem with choristers’ anxieties about and hopes for our present and future. A site-specific work reawakening history in the goliath raw space of the Navy Yard’s Agger Fish building, Port(al) brings co-composer Paola Prestini (co-founder and artistic director of National Sawdust, and a close friend of Brooklyn Youth Chorus), co-composer and co-librettist Jad Abumrad (founder and former co-host of Radiolab), and multidisciplinary director and co-librettist Jessica Grindstaff (a co-founder of Phantom Limb Company) into groundbreaking collaboration with Brooklyn Youth Chorus.
Vividly evoking and honoring Brooklyn’s ghosts, Port(al) spins oral histories from recently passed figures like historian Howard Zinn (who worked as an apprentice in the Navy Yard) and activist Clarence L. Irving, Sr. (who had been a riveter in the Navy Yard) into stunning compositions; looks into the legacy of machinist and drag king Rusty Brown; and considers the power of the first live radio singing performance, by mezzo soprano Eugenia Farrar. Reflected in this swirl of text and song, performance, guided audio tour, and séance are the early prison ships that floated in Wallabout Bay and left over 11,500 victims in their wake, all buried near Navy Yard in the early 1800s; Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”; women’s, immigrants’, and Black Americans’ labor during wartime; the rise of queer culture into the public eye; and more. Ebbing, flowing, and interweaving throughout the piece are the voices of the youth chorus speaking to their relationship to their very own time and place, and their future.
Port(al) is the first evening-length work commissioned, developed, produced, and presented entirely by Brooklyn Youth Chorus—and their first major work built for an unconventional performance venue. Port(al) boldly brings Berkun Menaker’s vision for the Chorus into new interdisciplinary territory. Much like Prestini’s earlier work with Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Aging Magician, Port(al) sets the strange fluidity and scope of time to song; and like the meticulously researched documentaries and oral histories Abumrad has crafted for radio, it transports audiences to textured understandings of individual stories and moments. Grindstaff, whose works have considered specific places’ (Antarctica, Fukushima, or the site of the world’s oldest living tree) relationships to a changing globe, here turns her lens on her own city.
Creative Team
BROOKLYN YOUTH CHORUS
Dianne Berkun Menaker, Founder and Artistic Director
Music by Paola Prestini and Jad Abumrad
Libretto by Jad Abumrad and Jessica Grindstaff
Directed by Jessica Grindstaff
Co-Created by Dianne Berkun Menaker, Paola Prestini, Jad Abumrad, and Jessica Grindstaff
Click HERE to purchase tickets. Please note, tickets will go on-sale February 2025.
The GRAMMY Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus (Founder & Artistic Director Dianne Berkun Menaker) presents the world premiere of Port(al), an ambitious new project—a performance installation, and a living museum—that continues to expand Brooklyn Youth Chorus’s dynamic vision for its live programming (beginning May 1, 2025). Engaging young singers in world-class art-making and bringing their ideas to the center of the creative process, Port(al) considers the history of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the connective possibilities of port cities, in tandem with choristers’ anxieties about and hopes for our present and future. A site-specific work reawakening history in the goliath raw space of the Navy Yard’s Agger Fish building, Port(al) brings co-composer Paola Prestini (co-founder and artistic director of National Sawdust, and a close friend of Brooklyn Youth Chorus), co-composer and co-librettist Jad Abumrad (founder and former co-host of Radiolab), and multidisciplinary director and co-librettist Jessica Grindstaff (a co-founder of Phantom Limb Company) into groundbreaking collaboration with Brooklyn Youth Chorus.
Vividly evoking and honoring Brooklyn’s ghosts, Port(al) spins oral histories from recently passed figures like historian Howard Zinn (who worked as an apprentice in the Navy Yard) and activist Clarence L. Irving, Sr. (who had been a riveter in the Navy Yard) into stunning compositions; looks into the legacy of machinist and drag king Rusty Brown; and considers the power of the first live radio singing performance, by mezzo soprano Eugenia Farrar. Reflected in this swirl of text and song, performance, guided audio tour, and séance are the early prison ships that floated in Wallabout Bay and left over 11,500 victims in their wake, all buried near Navy Yard in the early 1800s; Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”; women’s, immigrants’, and Black Americans’ labor during wartime; the rise of queer culture into the public eye; and more. Ebbing, flowing, and interweaving throughout the piece are the voices of the youth chorus speaking to their relationship to their very own time and place, and their future.
Port(al) is the first evening-length work commissioned, developed, produced, and presented entirely by Brooklyn Youth Chorus—and their first major work built for an unconventional performance venue. Port(al) boldly brings Berkun Menaker’s vision for the Chorus into new interdisciplinary territory. Much like Prestini’s earlier work with Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Aging Magician, Port(al) sets the strange fluidity and scope of time to song; and like the meticulously researched documentaries and oral histories Abumrad has crafted for radio, it transports audiences to textured understandings of individual stories and moments. Grindstaff, whose works have considered specific places’ (Antarctica, Fukushima, or the site of the world’s oldest living tree) relationships to a changing globe, here turns her lens on her own city.
Creative Team
BROOKLYN YOUTH CHORUS
Dianne Berkun Menaker, Founder and Artistic Director
Music by Paola Prestini and Jad Abumrad
Libretto by Jad Abumrad and Jessica Grindstaff
Directed by Jessica Grindstaff
Co-Created by Dianne Berkun Menaker, Paola Prestini, Jad Abumrad, and Jessica Grindstaff
Click HERE to purchase tickets. Please note, tickets will go on-sale February 2025.
