The 92nd Street Y, New York presents Freddie Ballentine, tenor & Kunal Lahiry, piano: Our People

The 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY) presents Freddie Ballentine, tenor & Kunal Lahiry, piano: Our People at Buttenwieser Hall at The Arnhold Center, 1395 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10128, on Tuesday, February 3, 2026 at 7:30 PM. Tickets start at $45 in-person and $25 to livestream and are available at https://www.92ny.org/event/freddie-ballentine-and-kunal-lahiry.



Grammy Award-winning tenor Freddie Ballentine has captivated audiences at the Metropolitan Opera, English National Opera, Washington National Opera and beyond with his powerful voice. Pianist Kunal Lahiry has earned acclaim for his performances at Wigmore Hall, Elbphilharmonie, the Kennedy Center, and more. These artists share a commitment to amplifying queer voices and stories, exploring Black and LGBTQ experiences through song. Arranged in pillars representing isolation, damnation, remembrance, and finally, revolution, and featuring music ranging from spirituals to songs by Copland, Ricky Ian Gordon, Schubert, Gershwin, Nina Simone and others, the concert takes listeners on a formidable journey, leaving them at their destination: hope.

Program

OUR PEOPLE

Shut Me Out (Isolation)

Traditional Spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”

Aaron Copland Selections from Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson

Nature! The Gentlest Mother

Why do They Shut Me Out of Heaven?

William Bolcom “George,” from Cabaret Songs

Franz Schubert “Memnon,” D. 541

Margaret Bonds “Minstrel Man,” from Three Dream Portraits

“Lord, I Just Can’t Keep From Cryin,” from Five Creek-Freedman Spirituals

Going Up in Smoke (Damnation)

David Krakauer “The ‘80s Miracle Diet” from The AIDS Quilt Songbook

Ricky Ian Gordon “I Never Knew” from The AIDS Quilt Songbook

Abel Meeropol (Lewis Allan) “Strange Fruit” (arr. P. Campos)

Requiem (Remembrance)

George Gershwin “The Man I Love” (arr. E. Wild)

John Musto “Litany,” from Shadow of the Blues

Henry Purcell “Dido’s Lament,” from Dido and Aeneas

So Loud, So Proud (Revolution)

Gordon “My People,” from Genius Child

Sergei Rachmaninoff “Spring Waters,” Op. 14, No. 11

Nina Simone “Backlash Blues” (arr. P. Campos)

Zach Redler “Brown”

Hailing from Norfolk, Virginia, Grammy Award-winning tenor Freddie Ballentine was the 2021 recipient of the Washington National Opera's Marian Anderson Award and is an alumnus of the company's Cafritz Young Artists program as well as LA Opera's Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program.

Ballentine's 2025/26 season includes his Bayerische Staatsoper debut as the Third Jew in Salome, which he will also record with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería. He returns to the Metropolitan Opera as Sportin' Life in Porgy and Bess, and makes his Rurhtriennale debut, reprising Venables/Huffman's We Are the Lucky Ones.

Recent highlights include the world premiere of We Are the Lucky Ones (Dutch National Opera); Kevin Richardson in The Central Park Five (Detroit Opera); Ben Marco in The Manchurian Candidate (Austin Opera); The Witch in Hänsel und Gretel (Utah Opera); Sam in Carlisle Floyd's Susannah (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis); Jack O'Brien and Toby Higgins in Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Opera Vlaanderen); Loge in Wagner's The Rhinegold and Nick in The Handmaid's Tale (English National Opera); Sportin' Life in Porgy and Bess (Met Opera, English National Opera, Dutch National Opera); Don José in Carmen (Seattle Opera); the Steersman in Der fliegende Höllander (Cincinnati Opera); Monastatos in Barrie Kosky's production of Die Zauberflöte, and Amon in Akhnaten (LA Opera).

Indian American pianist Kunal Lahiry is a former BBC New Generation Artist and recipient of the 2021 Carl Bechstein Foundation scholarship. This season he continues a partnership with Icelandic soprano Álfheiður Erla Guðmundsdóttir through the ECHO Rising Stars initiative, giving recitals at venues including the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Philharmonie de Paris, and BOZAR Brussels. He rejoins mezzo- soprano Fleur Barron for recitals in Madrid and Barcelona and returns to Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall for a new program celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States, with baritone Jarrett Ott. He will also premiere the new solo program, Journey to Softness, at the Pierre Boulez Saal Berlin and Philharmonie Duisburg.

During the 2024/25 season, he presented Power and the Glory, a program exploring colonialism and its musical resonances across the world, on tour throughout the United States, culminating in a sold-out Carnegie Hall debut. Recent projects include Apparition (2023), a reimagining of George Crumb's cycle interwoven with Nordic music; Our People (Kennedy Center, 2022), celebrating Black and LGBTQ voices; and Sleep Cycle of an Insomniac(Heidelberger Frühling Lied. LAB, 2022), an immersive journey inspired by Max Richter's Sleep. His large-scale project TransWinterreise reimagines Schubert's Winterreise through a queer lens, in collaboration with 24 contemporary composers.

Cross-disciplinary collaborations include Raw Cacao with drag artist Le Gateau Chocolat, a fusion of cabaret, folk, disco, and art song; performances with singer Lie Ning blending pianism and pop aesthetics; and an appearance at the Berlin Jazz Festival with AYA, exploring the boundaries between improvisation, pop, and jazz. As artist- in-residence at LIFE Victoria Barcelona (2023/24), he presented several recital formats, including Five Centuries of Song, and collaborated with soprano Siobhan Stagg. He also served as musical assistant for Nine Jewelled Dearat the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence. In 2023, he conceived and curated the Queer Song Festival at St. George's Bristol, broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Recent international tours have taken him to India (2024), as well as to the Musikverein, Elbphilharmonie, Wigmore Hall, Concertgebouw, and Konzerthaus Berlin. Kunal has collaborated with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, premiering works by Julia Perry and Pamela Harrison, and continues to champion underrepresented 20th-century composers.

Originally from Gainesville, Georgia, he is a graduate of McGill University (Schulich Scholar) and the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, with distinction in Lied performance. Based in Berlin, he is an Equilibrium Young Artist, Samling Artist, Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now Artist, and Britten Pears Young Artist.

About The 92nd Street Y, New York: The 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY) is a world-class center for the arts and innovation, a convener of ideas, and an incubator for creativity. 92NY offers extensive classes, courses and events online including live concerts, talks and master classes; fitness classes for all ages; 250+ art classes, and parenting workshops for new moms and dads. The 92nd Street Y, New York is transforming the way people share ideas and translate them into action all over the world. All of 92NY's programming is built on a foundation of Jewish values, including the capacity of civil dialogue to change minds; the potential of education and the arts to change lives; and a commitment to welcoming and serving people of all ages, races, religions, and ethnicities. For more information, visit www.92NY.org.

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