In Harmony

This March, Singing City presents Dream Keeper: The Life, Letters, and Lyrics of Langston Hughes, a concert that brings poetry, music, and community into close conversation. Created in collaboration with the imaginative and wonderfully talented team at Lyric Fest, the program offers an eclectic exploration of the great American writer’s life and legacy through choral music, art song, narration, and spoken word. Together, these elements reveal why Hughes remains not only a towering literary figure, but a profoundly human voice—wry, searching, tender, and hopeful.

A central feature of the Saturday, March 14 Family Concert  is Singing City’s collaboration with Dreamline, a Philadelphia-based organization that empowers young people to express their dreams through writing and storytelling. Students from Philadelphia schools participating in Dreamline’s programs will share original texts inspired by Langston Hughes’s poetry, placing contemporary youth voices in direct dialogue with Hughes’s words and ideals. This partnership underscores the concert’s focus on listening across generations and honoring creativity as a shared civic practice.

The March 14 performance also marks the performance debut ofSinging City: Next Generation, the organization’s reimagined youth choir program. Led by conductor and music educator Kendra Balmer, young singers will join the program onstage, embodying Singing City’s belief that choral music is most powerful when it connects voices across age, experience, and background. Their participation affirms the concert’s theme of legacy not as something inherited passively, but as something actively carried forward.

The Family Concert takes place at the Friends Center, a setting that holds particular resonance for Singing City as it is deeply aligned with the values that gave rise to Singing City itself. The choir was founded in 1948 out of Philadelphia’s Fellowship movement, rooted in ideals of shared humanity, social responsibility, and bringing people together across difference—principles that continue to guide Singing City’s work today. Those attending on March 14 are welcome to join a post-program community reception.

A second performance takes place on Sunday, March 15, offering audiences another opportunity to experienceDream Keeper in a concert setting focused on reflection and listening at Episcopal Cathedral. Together, the two performances invite audiences of all ages to engage with Hughes’s words as living texts—spoken, sung, and reimagined in sound.

This concert also sits within a much longer historical relationship between Singing City and Langston Hughes. That story—rooted in the choir’s archives and a landmark 1960 Philadelphia appearance by Hughes—is explored in greater depth in a companion post in In Harmony, Singing City’s space for reflection and history.

Dream Keeper: The Life, Letters, and Lyrics of Langston Hughes is presented on:
Saturday, March 14, 2026, Family Concert
Friends Center, 1501 Cherry Street, Philadelphia

Sunday, March 15, 2026

Episcopal Cathedral, 19 S 38th St Philadelphia

Tickets and full program details are available at singingcity.org. The March 14 Family Concert is especially designed to welcome young listeners, families, and community members for whom Hughes’s words continue to resonate as a source of imagination, dignity, and hope.