Join us as The Emmanuel Choir presents the world-premiere of To a Stranger, a major new work by choir member Eddie Spear: a Requiem Mass dedicated to the generation of lives lost during the AIDS crisis.
Since 1981, more than 700,000 American lives have been lost to HIV — and yet this catastrophe has remained largely unaddressed in the concert repertoire. Spear's Requiem steps into that silence. Set for choir, soloists, and string quartet, the work weaves the traditional Latin Mass with the recitation of names, historical testimony, and Walt Whitman's To a Stranger — in which the poet addresses an unknown passerby as a lost intimate, reaching across anonymity toward individual personhood — creating not a narrative of the epidemic, but a space of communal remembrance honoring the lost and the communities that refused to forget them.
This premiere reflects Emmanuel's enduring commitment to the LGBTQIA+ community of Baltimore and beyond: to perform this music is an act of witness — a declaration that the church stands with those silenced by stigma, abandoned by institutions, and mourned without ceremony. We have never been willing to forget.
Eddie Spear, featured composer
Christian Lane, direction