QUO's inaugural festival with chamber music, sound healing, and symphonic concerts.

For QUO, every month is Pride month, making the middle of our 15th anniversary season the perfect time to present our innaugural festival, QUOfest! The festival opens with a chamber program highlighting the musicianship of QUO's extraordinary artists. The next afternoon's unique program includes participatory music by queer luminaries well as an original sound bath by QUO's Associate Conductor and resident sound healer, Derek Weagle. Next, the full orchestra takes the stage with a program celebrating 10 years of marriage equality, and in the festival's final event, QUO presents a family program designed to inspire kids to compose. The whole festival takes place at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn Heights. Whereas the festival model is increasingly popular among professional performing arts presenters, it is a novelty in the community music space.

Schedule of Events:

March 14, 2025

8 pm - Joy Boy
In an intimate program of musical dialogues, musicians from Queer Urban Orchestra pair music of two New York queer composers with three pillars of the chamber music repertoire. Julius Eastman's Joy Boy embraces the creative voices of the performers, and inti figgis-vizueta's branching patterns conjures sounds of nature and the city. These works shake hands with a bucolic decet for wind instruments Romanian composer George Enescu's, music from Debussy's beloved Petite Suite, and Tchaikovsky's string sextet Souvenier de Florence, a passion project of the last five years of the composer's life.

March 15, 2025

3 pm - Tuning Meditation
In this afternoon participatory event of community bonding through sound, everyone gathered will bring to life Pauline Oliveros' Tuning Meditation. Anybody can participate, regardless of training, beginning with a single pitch and building as others contribute new pitches. QUO's Associate Conductor, Derek Weagle, also a skilled sound healer, leads the event and contributes a sound bath of their own creation. This program also pays homage to Ruth Anderson and Annea Lockwood, a married power couple whose work — both individually and as a creative team — boldly innovated the field of electronic music.

8 pm - Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue
Celebrating 10 years of marriage equality in the United States, QUO delivers a bespoke wedding gift from the heart. Something old (Mozart's effervescent Haffner Symphony) is paired with something new (the East Coast premiere of music by Yaz Lancaster). A little something borrowed comes from music of Georg Frederick Handel as arranged two centuries later by Edward Elgar. Gershwin's timeless bop Rhapsody in Blue completes the rhyme, featuring pianist James Adler, who "can create whatever type of music he wants at the keyboard" (Chicago Sun-Times).

March 16, 2025

3 pm - Rhapsody in YOU!
What is a composer? How do you start writing a piece from scratch? In this interactive concert, Queer Urban Orchestra gives kids a chance to try composing! The audience will create a new piece collectively, then perform the world premiere with QUO. To get the creative juices flowing, we hear music by Sigur Ros, take apart a Mozart symphony, and composer Yaz Lancaster introduces us to their music and processes. To top it all off, hear Gershwin's famous Rhapsody in Blue, featuring pianist James Adler, who "shows himself to be a distinguished, thoughtful, imaginative pianist" (Henry Fogel, Fanfare). This hour-long program is designed for ages 6-12 and their families.

Date: March 14 - 16, 2025

Location: St. Ann and The Holy Trinity Church, 157 Montague Street Brooklyn, NY 11201

Click here to Buy Tickets

Click here for more Information