ChamberQUEER in the Drawing Room: A Radical Salon Experience

Monday April 20th 2026 at 6:00 PM Join ChamberQUEER for a one-night-only transformation of Express Newark’s Drawing Room into a vibrant, inclusive salon space for the 21st century. Inspired by historic “withdrawing rooms” as sites of intimacy, reflection, and intellectual exchange, this immersive event reimagines the classical concert as a radically welcoming gathering. Blurring the boundaries between performer and audience, the evening invites you to move freely, listen deeply, and engage with music in a setting where the art studio meets the comfort and energy of a shared living room. Rooted in the idea of social sculpture, art shaped through collective participation, this is a concert experience where your presence is part of the work.

The program centers the voices of women and non-binary composers across time, tracing a lineage from the 19th-century salon to today’s evolving “salon culture.” At the heart of the evening is Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio in G minor, Op. 17, a powerful and expressive work that highlights her enduring brilliance. Surrounding this centerpiece are intimate chamber works by composers including Jessie Montgomery, Eve Beglarian, Stephanie Leotsakos, Jennifer Higdon, and Margaret Bonds. Together, these works create a rich, intergenerational dialogue that reclaims and amplifies voices historically excluded from the classical canon.

In the spirit of salon culture as a space of political and creative empowerment, ChamberQUEER “queers” traditional concert norms by dismantling rigid etiquette, rethinking dress codes, and inviting audiences to engage on their own terms. Whether you sit, stand, wander, or reflect, you are part of a shared experience that is intimate, dynamic, and deeply human. This is more than a concert, it’s a reimagining of what music can be: participatory, expansive, and rooted in community.

This performance is part of the Cultural Programming Grant and hosted by Rutgers University-Newark's Department of Arts, Culture and Media, (ACM) and SHINE Portrait Studio @ Express Newark.

About ChamberQUEER

Hailed as “a utopian dream… [at] the cutting-edge of classical music” (The Nation), ChamberQUEER highlights LGBTQ+ voices in contemporary & historical music and reimagines the classical concert experience as a radically inclusive gathering space & musical community for the 21st century. Founded in 2018 by Jules Biber (cello), Danielle Buonaiuto (soprano), Brian Mummert (baritone), and Andrew Yee (cello), CQ operates as a collective of performers, composers, and creators. Our flagship annual Pride festival, staged in Brooklyn each June, has been commended by The New Yorker and listed by The New York Times as a 2022 “Best of Pride” event; 2024’s fringe-style festival, Constellation, featured twenty-one events over six days, showcasing the voices of dozens of LGBTQ+ musicians from around the globe.

ChamberQUEER interrogates and experiments with, or “queers,” European art music’s presumed necessities and existing norms. By crafting new narratives from the canon, democratizing performance etiquette and dress, and shattering the performer-audience binary, we create a fresh and inviting environment for a new generation of music lovers. Recent projects emphasizing these values have included collaboratively-curated concerts with alumnae of Luna Composition Lab; a concert and talk-back with LGBTQ+ students at Boston College; presentations on equity and belonging at Chamber Music America and Early Music America’s national conferences; and shows presented by National Sawdust, WQXR at the Greene Space, Death of Classical at Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn Pride, Trinity Wall Street, the Boulanger Initiative, Classical Uprising, and Westerlies Fest. Our founders and members regularly represent ChamberQUEER as ambassadors at chamber music festivals, podcasts, public radio broadcasts, and residencies across the country.

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