The Passing of the Year
October 11 & 12, 2025 

The opening concert of the 48th season celebrates nature and the changing seasons with music by Jonathan Dove, Aaron Copland, Z. Randall Stroope, Craig Hella Johnson, and more. English composer Jonathan Dove’s The Passing of the Year is the centerpiece of the concert and weaves poetry by Blake, Dickinson, Tennyson, and others into a dramatic telling of the joyful and poignant passing of a year.

The Light of Hope Returning
December 6 & 7, 2025

American composer Shawn Kirchner’s The Light of Hope Returning is a ceremony of folk carols featuring traditional familiar carols and newly written carols with added text by award-winning author Susan Cooper and others. Featuring an eclectic sextet of instrumentalists, The Light of Hope Returning takes listeners on a journey from distant hope through darkness into the rebirth of light and true hope for the future.

Petition
March 14 & 15, 2026

German composer Felix Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer for choir and organ is the centerpiece of this concert of sacred music. The concert includes other works from the 19th century by Mendelssohn, Robert Lucas Pearsall, and Anton Bruckner, as well as Henry Purcell and Maurice Duruflé.

America’s Bard
May 23 & 24, 2026

American poet Walt Whitman’s works have long inspired composers wishing to capture the essence of his writings. The centerpiece of this concert is Jeffrey Van’s haunting A Procession Winding Around Me for guitar and chorus. Whitman texts will be featured in music by other 20th century American composers, including Rene Clausen, Norman Dello Joio, and William Schuman.

Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank

R. Nathaniel Dett

Annelies

James Whitbourn’s musical setting of the Diary of Anne Frank

This concert features British composer James Whitbourn’s oratorio Annelies with a libretto by Melanie Challenger based on Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.  This moving work was composed in 2004 and first performed in London in January 2005 as part of the National Holocaust Commemoration.  Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (1929-1945) was a German-born Jewish girl who kept a diary documenting her life in hiding amid Nazi persecution during the German occupation of the Netherlands. She gained fame posthumously with the publication of her diary in 1947. Annelies will feature soprano soloist Jennifer Perez. The concerts will conclude with Whitbourn’s All Shall Be Amen and Alleluia.

Saturday, October 19, 2024, 4pm
St. Bede’s Episcopal Church

Sunday, October 20, 2024, 4pm
Temple Beth Shalom

Ceremony of Carols

Celebration of British Carols by Britten, Rutter, and Chilcott

Ceremony of Carols celebrates the rich tradition of holiday music from Great Britain. In recognition of Bob Chilcott's 70th and John Rutter's 80th birthdays we offer a selection of their most popular carols sung by the Chorale in past seasons including Chilcott’s “Mid-winter” and Rutter’s “The Very Best Time of the Year.” At the center of the concert is Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols, one of his best-known and most-performed works. It is a brilliantly conceived and dramatic concert work of 11-movements written after Britten’s return from a trip to the U.S. in 1942. Its text consists of an eclectic mix of anonymous medieval texts and later poems rather than familiar carols. Not all the texts are festive, or even about winter!  Originally written for female voices and harp, Britten subsequently published a version for mixed voices which we perform in this concert.

Friday December 6, 2024, 7pm
Saturday December 7, 2024, 4pm
St. Bede’s Episcopal Church

JUBILEE

A concert of joy through the voices of America's black composers

Jubilee brings together the powerful voices of America's black composers. The featured work is R. Nathaniel Dett’s spellbinding fantasia-like oratorio, The Chariot Jubilee, thought to be the first-ever symphonic work based solely on African-American spirituals and folklore.  Originally written and performed with orchestra in 1919, the work was forgotten for nearly 80 years before a new performing edition for either orchestra or piano accompaniment brought this exuberant work back to life . To complement Dett’s oratorio, Music Director George Case has chosen a selection of other favorite spirituals and praise songs arranged by William Dawson, Moses Hogan, Udine Smith Moore, and Marques L. A. Garrett.

Saturday, March 8, 2025, 4pm
St. Bede’s Episcopal Church

Johann Sebastian Bach

Reformation

Music from the Reformation traditions by J.S. Bach, William Byrd and others

Out of cultural upheaval can come some of the most sublime artistic expressions. The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century religious, political, and cultural movement that challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and led to the creation of Protestantism. This concert explores the Reformation’s influence on the composers of the times as reflected in two masterworks, one from each side of the divide. The great German composer J. S. Bach expressed his Protestant spirituality by creating works in the vernacular using new texts and hymn tunes as illustrated in his grand motet Jesu, meine Freude. Englishman William Byrd worked for Protestant Queen Elizabeth I, but secretly favored his Catholic upbringing. His Mass for Four Voices is an example of the Latin church music he composed for private devotions. The Reformation’s wide musical influence extended to music of the Catholic Reformation, which will be illustrated by compositions of Victoria and Palestrina.

Saturday, May 17, 2025, 4pm
St. Bede’s Episcopal Church