World Refugee Day Concert to Premiere "Songs of Resilience" and Support Immigrants Detained at Delaney Hall

Award-winning composer Sheila Silver, renowned operatic soprano Melissa Citro, and PROTESTRA present an evening of classical music and the world premiere of a new work, June 20 at 7 p.m.

MAPLEWOOD, N.J., June 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- On World Refugee Day, June 20, composer Sheila Silver's new song cycle, Songs of Resilience, will receive its world premiere during a benefit concert raising funds to support immigrants detained at Delaney Hall, the federal immigration detention center in Newark. The concert, featuring internationally recognized singers and instrumentalists, will take place at 7 p.m. at St. George's Episcopal Church in Maplewood. The concert is co-produced by Silver, Maplewood resident Melissa Citro, and PROTESTRA.

To buy tickets, visit https://events.humanitix.com/songs-of-resilience. All proceeds will go to organizations providing critical assistance to our immigrant neighbors: First Friends of New Jersey & New York and Cosecha.

Silver's song cycle, Songs of Resilience, will feature soprano Melissa Citro, soprano Teresa Castillo, and pianist Francesco Barfoed. Silver's powerful new song cycle gives voice to individuals confronting urgent social, political, and humanitarian crises — a journalist witnessing starvation in South Sudan; a parent discovering banned books in Florida; a Palestinian-American poet who documents displacement, lineage and homemaking away from home; a Turkish Ph.D. student arrested and jailed for writing an Op-Ed in her school newspaper; a mother and daughter experiencing the loss of a free society; a rallying cry, "Don't comply in advance!"; and a prayer yearning for a kinder, more loving world, "May we be saved by what we save." The songs embody a plea for sanity, empathy, healing and renewal, while also speaking to courage, conscience and the weight of moral reckoning. Each is penned by a different author: Nicholas Kristof, Sara Abou Rashed, Ann Ellsworth, Victor Feldman, Stephen Kitsakos, Rob Lewis, and Lucile Lichtblau.

In addition, flutist Juan Carlos Narváez and pianist Francesco Barfoed will perform Borderless Dreams, a new work by composer Arturo Rodriguez. This passionate work explores the interior narrative many immigrants experience when contemplating emigration, spanning from hope to trepidation, and from home toward the unknown.

St. George's Episcopal Church is located at 550 Ridgewood Road, Maplewood, NJ, just a two-block walk from Maplewood's NJ Transit station. Parking is available in the church lot and on nearby side streets. The concert will run approximately 80 minutes, with a reception to follow.

If you are unable to attend or want to provide additional support, please donate to these organizations through this crowdfunding link: https://donorbox.org/songs-of-resilience. To learn more about the songs, the authors, and to read the texts, visit https://www.sheilasilver.com/songs-of-resilience/.

ABOUT SHEILA SILVER:
Sheila Silver is a distinguished composer of chamber and orchestral music, songs, opera and film scores. Her opera, A Thousand Splendid Suns, based on the international bestselling novel by Khaled Hosseini, was premiered by Seattle Opera in February 2023 and shortlisted for "Best World Premiere" by International Opera Awards, 2023. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Sackler Prize in Opera; numerous Opera America and National Endowment for the Arts awards; Bunting Institute Fellowship; Rome Prize; Prix de Paris, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Composer Award and numerous grants and commissions. Her music is performed internationally. She is also professor emeritus at Stony Brook University and lives in the Hudson Valley of New York.

ABOUT MELISSA CITRO:
Soprano Melissa Citro specializes in bringing the great soprano heroines of Puccini, Wagner, Janáček, and Dvořák to life, including Tosca, Turandot, Minnie, Sieglinde, Senta, Elisabeth, Jenůfa, Emilia Marty, and Rusalka. Grand Finals Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and Winner of the George London Award, Citro has performed with the San Francisco Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Washington National Opera, Glimmerglass Festival, Stuttgart Opera, Detroit Opera, Opera Colorado, New Orleans Opera, Opera Southwest, Virginia Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Dallas Opera, Hawaii Opera Theatre, Bard Summerscape, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and Richmond Symphony Orchestra. Citro studied at The Juilliard School and Westminster Choir College, with additional training at Music Academy of the West and San Francisco Opera's Merola Program. A native of Quincy, Illinois, Citro is a longtime resident of Maplewood, New Jersey.

ABOUT PROTESTRA:
PROTESTRA (protest + orchestra) bridges the divide between advocacy and classical music through grassroots orchestral benefit concerts. Our new vision for classical music prioritizes diversity, equity, inclusion, representation, and accessibility. First assembled in 2017 and formally incorporated in 2020, PROTESTRA is a volunteer-run orchestra and 501(c)(3) organization. PROTESTRA's grassroots orchestral benefit concerts inspire activism by contextualizing classical music performance through multimedia education and turn voluntary audience donations into targeted support for mission- and policy-driven groups related to the concert's themes. PROTESTRA prioritizes diversity, equity, inclusion, representation, and accessibility in both its hiring and programming practices. Additionally, PROTESTRA maintains a robust social media presence, creating and sharing original content and resources with 10,000+ followers across multiple platforms.

SOURCE PROTESTRA