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The Brooklyn Youth Chorus opened Friday’s 9/11 memorial ceremony in New York with a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” continuing a tradition that has become one of the enduring musical touchstones of the annual commemoration held at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. Their performance set the tone for a ceremony marking 25 years since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, drawing thousands of family members, first responders, city officials and four former U.S. presidents to the site where the World Trade Center once stood.
The Grammy-winning chorus, based in Brooklyn and known for its work with major orchestras and artists across genres, has performed at 9/11 commemorations for years, including at the ceremony marking the memorial’s official opening on the 10th anniversary in 2011. Its involvement in the anniversary has grown into something close to a fixture of the day, alongside other recurring elements such as the tolling of bells, moments of silence timed to the exact minutes the towers were struck and fell, and the public reading of victims’ names by their family members. The chorus, made up largely of young singers from across New York City, has long been seen as a fitting symbol for the ceremony given how many of the day’s victims left behind children who grew up without a parent.
This year’s anniversary carried added weight given the milestone. All four living former presidents, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Joe Biden, attended alongside their wives, a rare joint appearance that underscored how significant the quarter-century mark has become for the country’s collective memory of the attacks. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Senator Chuck Schumer, and former mayors Michael Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio and Rudy Giuliani were also present, along with Vice President JD Vance, who attended on behalf of the Trump administration but did not speak, consistent with the memorial’s longstanding rule barring political speeches at the ceremony.
The musical opening set a somber and reflective tone before the ceremony moved into its central ritual, the reading aloud of the names of all 2,977 people killed in the attacks at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and aboard the four hijacked planes, including United Flight 93, which crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers fought back against hijackers. Moments of silence were observed at each of the pivotal times from that morning, beginning at 8:46 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center’s North Tower, and continuing through the collapse of both towers and the strikes on the Pentagon and in Shanksville.
Music has played a consistent role in the ceremony’s structure since the earliest anniversaries. Past commemorations have featured performances from artists including cellist Yo-Yo Ma, singer-songwriters James Taylor and Paul Simon, and bagpipers representing the city’s fire department, police department and Port Authority. The Brooklyn Youth Chorus’s role in opening the ceremony has remained one of the more consistent elements across those years, giving the event a recognizable musical signature that has carried through multiple mayoral administrations and, this year, spanned four different presidencies represented among the attendees.
The chorus itself has built its reputation well beyond the 9/11 ceremony, performing with the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics and collaborating with artists ranging from Elton John to Arcade Fire. Its presence at the memorial each September, though, remains tied specifically to the organization’s home base in Brooklyn and its long relationship with the city’s broader cultural and civic life, a connection that has made its annual appearance at Ground Zero feel less like a scheduled performance and more like a piece of New York’s ongoing relationship with the tragedy.
For families who lost loved ones in the attacks, the ceremony’s blend of solemn tradition and youthful voices has taken on particular resonance over the past 25 years, especially as more than 1,000 children who lost a parent that day have grown into adulthood alongside the memorial itself. Some of those children have returned to the site in later years not as attendees but as speakers, reading names or sharing memories during the ceremony, a pattern that mirrors how the chorus’s young singers embody a similar generational continuity each year.
The health toll from the attacks has also continued to grow in the years since, with an estimated 9,000 additional deaths linked to illnesses tied to exposure at Ground Zero, the Pentagon and Shanksville. That ongoing toll has kept the anniversary from becoming purely ceremonial, as advocacy groups continue pushing for expanded federal support for surviving responders and cleanup workers even a quarter century after the attacks occurred.
As the 25th anniversary ceremony concluded, the familiar elements that have defined the day since the memorial’s founding, the chorus’s opening performance, the reading of names, and the precisely timed moments of silence, once again gave shape to a morning that has become as much about ritual and remembrance as it is about the historical events themselves. Continuing coverage of major civic and historical commemorations is available on Business Tech. Further details on this year’s ceremony and participating performers can be found through the National September 11 Memorial and Museum’s official site.
