Trans Requiem by Andrew Yee
Two-time GRAMMY Award–winning cellist and composer Andrew Yee announced the July 17 release of Trans Requiem, an album recorded at the world premiere of her groundbreaking work for trans voices, choirs, and orchestra. The requiem was commissioned by and performed at Trinity Church NYC, and the album was released by New Amsterdam Records.
The first single from the album, “Death Before Detransition,” was released on May 19, 2026.
Trans Requiem is a bold and necessary act of musical testimony. Rooted in the sacred tradition of the requiem mass, this work reimagines the form through the lens of a trans woman. “I want to give trans people the dignity of being grieved — the kind of communal space that we’re so often denied. This isn’t just a requiem for the dead; it’s a requiem for the living. A space to feel sadness, to reflect, to rage, to remember — and also to love and to find peace,” says Yee. At once an elegy and an act of resistance, Trans Requiem creates space to mourn the lost, honor survival, and imagine a future where trans lives are cherished and held as sacred.
Trans Requiem was conducted by Melissa Attebury and features performances by Andrew Yee, soloists Breanna Sinclairé and Katherine Goforth, NOVUS, Trinity Choir, Trinity Youth Chorus, and production by Melissa Baker and William Brittelle.
Out Today: “Death Before Detransition”
Like a fist raised in resistance, “Death Before Detransition” is the work’s most defiant moment, drawing from a poignant poem by Jennifer Espinoza. Raw and uncompromising, it uses, as Yee explains, “the language of those who hate us, turned inside out.”
About Trans Requiem
Trans Requiem is composer Andrew Yee’s story: a gift to her community, wrapped in love, empathy, and the hope of healing. For Yee, the composition began as an act of mourning — a refusal to rush past sadness in the face of the recent relentless attacks on her community. “I just wanted to be sad,” she recalls. “To take a minute to feel the weight of what was happening to trans people — and to grieve openly. I wanted to give trans folks the dignity of being grieved. We deserve that.”
Trans Requiem follows the broad structure of the traditional requiem, but Yee uses the flexibility of the concert setting to shape an intensely personal arc that reflects our time. The work was conceived after the 2025 election, which saw Yee grappling with feelings of sadness and hopelessness. After performing a mass at Trinity Church, Yee realized that a requiem would “get my feelings out about what it means to be trans in the United States right now.” She spent eight months writing the requiem and recontextualizing its ancient grieving framework. Says Yee, “there's something really cathartic about the requiem being so over the top sad and angry, and its arrival at radical acceptance. A requiem is made for a person who really feels things to their maximum levels, and for me, that is a comfortable and safe place to exist in.”
Yee’s work of living defiance creates a musical space where fear, vulnerability, joy, rage, and peace can coexist. “Each movement reflects something I’ve felt as a trans woman in this world: anger, fear, love, hope. And I wanted to hold them all at once — because that’s how we live,” she says. Following the opening “Kyrie,” the ancient plea for divine mercy, Yee inserts a new movement, “Would You Have Mercy?” that asks mercy not of God, but from harassing strangers on the street. "Lux Aeterna," (or light eternal, traditionally a prayer for the deceased) is preceded by “Light,” a tribute to the late trans activist Cecilia Gentili.
Yee breaks tradition by reassigning the requiem’s final section, “In Paradisum,” not to soprano voices but to lower ones, reclaiming the closing blessing for those whose voices — and lives — have so often been excluded from grace. In her version, heaven is not reserved for the pure or the “palatable”; it is open to all exactly as they are. “I think those of us with lower voices deserve paradise, too. I don’t need to change myself to be worthy of it,” she says.
For the trans singers featured in Trans Requiem, performing this work is more than musical interpretation — it’s a sacred act of solidarity. “My identity as a trans individual is just one aspect of who I am,” says soloist Breanna Sinclairé. “I am also a musician, a singer, a leader, and more.” Too often, she notes, people fixate only on the most visible part of a trans person’s identity. But through this music she says, “We are contributing to something revolutionary — something that fosters greater understanding and awareness of our community.”
Bringing a work like Trans Requiem into a sacred space like Trinity carries profound meaning, as the work also offers a way for all people to understand their faith more deeply. “Showcasing a liturgical work that is rooted in trans experience can deepen everyone’s understanding of what a requiem is — and will be a living, breathing demonstration of how such an ancient tradition can sustain us now,” says Rev. Elizabeth Edman.
Throughout Trans Requiem, Yee invites us to hold grief and joy in the same breath. To face fear without flinching, and to believe in the possibility of peace. This is sacred music—music that comforts, disrupts, and transforms.
“They cannot force us to grieve alone,” Yee reminds us. “This piece is a reminder that we can — and must — grieve together.”
Tracklist
- Requiem
- Kyrie
- Would You Have Mercy?
- Light
- Lux Aeterna
- Libera Me
- I Am Afraid
- Death Before Detransition
- In Paradisum
Credits
Conductor: Melissa Attebury
Composition, Voice, Cello: Andrew Yee
Voice: Breanna Sinclairé and Katherine Goforth
Ensembles: NOVUS, Trinity Choir, Trinity Youth Chorus
Production: Melissa Baker and William Brittelle
Executive Producer: The Rev. Michael A. Bird, Vicar, Trinity Church NYC
Recording Engineers: Kevin Kim; Jean John (Assistant Recording Engineer)
Mixing Engineer: Michael Hammond
Additional Mixing: Thomas Durack
Mastering Engineer: Idania Valencia at Sterling Sound
Additional Audio team: Luke Cherchenko
Album Artwork: Tuesday Smillie
Additional Trinity Church NYC Staff for Trans Requiem: Harrison E. Joyce, Production Manager and Music Librarian; Brittany Thomas, Artistic Administrator; Thomas McCargar, Choir Administrator; Peyton Marion, Director of Music Education
About Andrew Yee
Two-time GRAMMY Award-winning cellist and composer Andrew Yee (She/They) loves making art. She is a founding member of the Attacca Quartet, whose recordings of the string quartets of Caroline Shaw, Orange and Evergreen have each won GRAMMY awards. They can also be heard on the score of the Alfonso Cuaron show Disclaimer, scored by Finneas O’Connell and on Billie Eilish’s album Hit Me Hard and Soft.
As a composer, she has written for film and television, including Wu Tsang’s Moby Dick, Love, Jamie, and two seasons of the BBC show We Might Regret This. She has had pieces premiered by the Zurich Chamber Ensemble, the New York Philharmonic, and Caroline Shaw. Her new version of the opera ‘Carmen’ was premiered in Zurich in 2024. She recently premiered a new work for orchestra, choir, and trans soloists called Trans Requiem.
Her son Otis is the love of her life.
About Trinity Chuch NYC:
Trinity Church NYC is an Episcopal parish in New York City, founded in 1697. Known for a vibrant spiritual life and a globally recognized music program, we work for justice, serve our neighbors, and bring people together to experience God’s love, in community. Through the Trinity Choir, Trinity Youth Chorus, and NOVUS (Trinity’s new-music ensemble), Trinity commissions, performs, and records repertoire spanning centuries, with a special commitment to new work that speaks to today. Trinity’s concerts, community partnerships, and free or low-cost offerings make world-class music accessible to all while fostering creativity, compassion, and civic engagement.