Five Boroughs Music Festival returns to Flushing Town Hall this October with the Queens premiere of the Five Borough Songbook, Volume III! This marks the third installment of the celebrated song cycle, and the third time the Songbook comes to Flushing Town Hall, after the premiere of Volume I in 2012 and Volume II in 2017.

A special co-production with ON SITE OPERA, this new cycle of fifteen songs, duets, and ensembles by fifteen composers was commissioned in honor of 5BMF’s 15th Anniversary and On Site Opera’s 10th Anniversary seasons, and marks the third installment of 5BMF’s critically-acclaimed quinquennial FIVE BOROUGH SONGBOOK project. This fall, the Songbook comes to life with an all-star lineup of artists, including performers from the acclaimed vocal supergroup KALEIDOSCOPE VOCAL ENSEMBLE — sopranos Nicole Joseph and Gitanjali Mathur, mezzo-soprano Cecilia Duarte, tenor Haitham Haidar, and bass-baritone Jonathan Woody — as well as pianist Erika Switzer, violinist Pala Garcia, and cellist John Popham.

Featuring new works by Arianne Abela, Raquel Acevedo Klein, Kinan Azmeh, Colin Britt, Majel Connery, Laura Jobin-Acosta, Will Healy, Brian Lawlor, Jessica Meyer, Angélica Negrón, Nkeiru Okoye, Juri Seo, Aaron Siegel, Darian Donovan Thomas, and Jonathan Woody, the Songbook derives its inspiration from locations scattered throughout New York City — three songs for each borough — to create a mosaic of the city’s past, present and future. The Songbook’s texts are drawn from a variety of sources: written by the composers themselves; drawn from existing poetry by Nick Main, Amy Lowell, Joseph Tusiani, and Walt Whitman; or featuring new texts, including lyrics in Arabic by Firas Suleiman, in Spanish and English by Noel Quiñones, and in English by Tom Lee and Valerie Seeley.