The culmination of a week of music-making, conversation, and collective hope and optimism, our closing gala features performances by artists performing at Screen Door 2023, led by spectacular international vocal talents.

Hope can thrive in so many places within our hearts and minds, in our love for other people as in Gabriel Kahane’s enchanting and wistful song in which two people describe a favorite seaside spot and sing, “I hope we die here when we’re old”. Bach’s cantata contemplates the futility of earthly matters and the promise of heavenly peace in some of the most beautifully serene music ever written. Our featured composer, Nico Muhly’s song cycle written for Nicholas Phan juxtaposes settings of accounts of immigration through Ellis Island with those of texts protesting the United States’ Chinese Exclusion policies of the late-19th century. Nicholas describes his encounters with Muhly’s music as being both “artistically and personally transformative,” and recalls the Stranger’s premiere as the first time he felt his identity had been respectfully represented in a work of classical music. Our Screen Door performance of the work is a new arrangement for string orchestra, featuring Palaver Strings.

Songwriter Kenyatta Emmanuel is an artist and activist who has shared his music from Sing Sing to Carnegie Hall, offering a full live concert the same day of his return home after serving 24½ years in prison. His music and message explore the beauty of life, reminding us of all that we hold in common. Our Screen Door 2023 ends with a song by Kenyatta that embodies so much of what the music programmed this year expresses – “holding on to love, holding off despair and I’m holding out hope”.

Art by Devon Kelley-Yurdin