Voices reach out across generations for LGBTQ+ youth in a newly commissioned work by award-winning composer Andrea Clearfield. A mother writes to her transgender son on his 5th birthday to affirm who he always was. A survivor of conversion therapy writes to the memory of their own younger self, fighting to survive their mother’s desperate attempt to save them from whom they are. We further explore the intimate power of the human voice and spirit through poems on music by Walter de la Mare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Emily Dickinson, and a contemporary Norwegian composer’s settings of a 16th century Spanish mystic. Also featuring works by Ronald Perera and Ola Gjeilo.

Coro Allegro marks the centennial of acclaimed and beloved Boston LGBTQ+ composer Daniel Pinkham with fanfares and works for double choir by the late composer and by Vaughan Williams in his 150th anniversary. We then introduce Boston audiences to a 12-voice motet by composer Shawn Crouch, based on the poems by American Iraq War veteran Brian Turner, which are juxtaposed with works by 12th Century Persian poet Hāfez, selected, reinterpreted and translated by contemporary Iranian poet, Sholeh Wolpé.

Coro Allegro marks 30+ years with Artistic Director David Hodgkins with a work written by Daniel Pinkham for Coro Allegro in celebration of the extraordinary, and the diversity of creation. Pinkham's setting of 18th century English neurodivergent poet Christopher Smart is paired with Hadyn’s mass for troubled times, plus a spiritual arrangement by Dr. White-Clayton, reimagined with Black lives and Covid losses in mind, which Coro Allegro was honored to premiere with the Boston Landmarks Orchestra this summer.