Trinity Church NOVUS Renewal: emergency shelter intake form

Trinity’s new-music orchestra, NOVUS, continues its series of works that grapple with vital social issues. This season’s NOVUS Renewal: Shelter concerts highlight the experiences of the unhoused and the complex systemic failures that lead to homelessness.

Opening the series is the New York premiere of Gabriel Kahane’s oratorio, emergency shelter intake form. With a libretto based on the questionnaire given to those seeking a bed, the work is a searing portrait of the fear, humiliation, and profound challenges associated with being unhoused in America.

NOVUS; Alicia Hall Moran, soprano; Gabriel Kahane, Holland Andrews, and Holcombe Waller (the chorus of inconvenient statistics); choirs from the Borough of Manhattan Community College; Daniela Candillari, conductor