Fall Performances in Chicago & New York

This fall, Brent Funderburk anchors two distinctive art song programs in Chicago and New York, exploring music that connects the human voice to nature, poetry, and the changing world around us.

September 26 — Ganz Hall, Chicago

For its 15th season, Art Song Chicago opens its Collaborative Works Festival with Gods of the Earth, a program exploring nature as divine force—elemental, mysterious, and beyond human control. Featuring music ranging from Mahler to Monteverdi, the program includes the Midwestern premiere of Vivian Fung’s Lamenting Earth, a cycle for tenor, string quartet, and piano inspired by climate activist-poet Claire Wahmanholm and expanded through the voices and poetry of high-school students. Their perspectives transform lament into testimony and invite us to consider our relationship with the natural world. Tickets here.

October 11 — Roulette, Brooklyn

Brooklyn Art Song Society presents Passions, a program celebrating the final burst of intoxicating Romanticism at the turn of the 20th century. Brent performs Richard Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder with Canadian-Italian soprano Aviva Fortunata, alongside works by Joseph Marx, Hans Pfitzner, and Alexander Zemlinsky. A pre-concert lecture by the Goethe-Institut’s Dean Whiteside begins at 4:30 p.m. Tickets here.

Two programs, two cities, and a season of music that invites us to listen deeply—to the natural world, to poetry, and to the extraordinary expressive possibilities of the human voice.