Kulshan Chorus takes the stage at the Mount Baker Theatre on January 4, 2020. Our performance, "Light is Returning" shows how hope transcends even the darkest hour. Artistic Director, Dustin Willetts, has chosen several songs which present stories of triumph over adversity. Join us as we sing works by award winning-composer Jake Runestad, alongside fabulous others such as Craig Hella Johnson, Pentatonix, & Gawthrop. It will be an uplifting evening to remember!

This concert features the best Franco-Flemish composers of the Renaissance. The centerpiece of the program Orlando Lassus's mass setting "Missa super Bell' Amfitrit' altera," scored for eight voices. Accompanying the mass, are two motets by Josquin and Gombert, based on King David's lament over his beloved son Absalom.

SWC rocks the vote with a timely and rousing concert that marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and decries the continued struggle for free and fair voting rights for all people. Featuring “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” “R.O.C.K. in the USA,” and The Beatles’ “Revolution.” Plus, a new commission, “Lifting as We Climb,” inspired by the words of suffragist Mary Church Terrill, charter member of the NAACP.

SWC rocks the vote with a timely and rousing concert that marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and decries the continued struggle for free and fair voting rights for all people. Featuring “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” “R.O.C.K. in the USA,” and The Beatles’ “Revolution.” Plus, a new commission, “Lifting as We Climb,” inspired by the words of suffragist Mary Church Terrill, charter member of the NAACP.

Quinn MASON, A Joyous Trilogy [world premiere]
MOZART, Clarinet Concerto
STRAVINSKY, Le sacre du printemps

A world premiere by young composer-conductor Quinn Mason, a performance of Mozart’s exquisite clarinet concerto by SSO principal clarinetist Ben Lulich, and Igor Stravinsky’s epochal The Rite of Spring make this a concert for the ages.

The Everett Chorale will be performing with other choirs at this special event at Benaroya Hall. Please contact an Everett Chorale member for tickets or call

978-502-5351

Music of struggle, death, and renewed hope.

PROGRAM

RUNESTAD Fear Not, Dear Friend
BARBER Agnus Dei
ELDER - Shadows Will Fall
DIORIO - I Am

SHORT/WILBERG The Dying Soldier
TICHELI There will be rest
TICHELI Earth Song
BARBER The Virgin Martyrs
BARBER Let Down The Bars, O Death (Op. 8)

Emerald Ensemble and the National Nordic Museum present music from Sweden. Traditional favorites by Stenhammar, Olsson, Wikander, and Alfvén will stand beside more modern works by Lundvik, Sixten, Jan and Sven-David Sandström, and others.

Join KCS and friends for a timely celebration of community and love, featuring local guest artists and composers. Complimentary chocolate and wine are a bonus feature of this joyful event.

The image of the Phoenix rising out of the ashes comes originally from Egyptian mythology but was taken over by the early Christians as a symbol of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. From its opening bars, this work, with its unique combination of instruments and voices, succeeds in transporting both performers and listeners. Indeed, this transcendence to a "resurrection experience," the essence of this piece, is captured so vividly through the musical medium as the drama of the text unfolds.

Festival seating; season ticket holders get preferred seating.

Welcome to a musical and spiritual journey that takes a deeper look at what it means to “belong”, from our role in the larger global family (It Takes a Whole Village), to a more intimate look at our identity as supported by those whom we love (Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child). The concert closes with several pieces that challenge our sense of belonging by offering various ideals on how to live one’s life, re-envisioning “home” not as a place or a group of people, but rather “home” as a state of mind. From Paul Simon to Johannes Brahms, everyone will find something to love in this concert!

The Ensign Youth and Children’s Choirs join the adult chorus for a program highlighting music from Broadway and movie scores. Along with their serious works of choral and symphonic excellence with an uplifting message, the Ensign Symphony & Chorus will present a collection of their favorite songs that are sure to get stuck in your head.

2020 marks 100 years since the adoption of Amendment XIX to the United States Constitution. With this program, we honor the work and achievements of women who fought for the right to vote a century ago. We also honor those who have labored ever since to make this right a reality for all American women.

Join us as we celebrate the music of American women past and present, including recent music by Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw (from Roomful of Teeth), Reena Esmail, Rosephayne Powell, and Meredith Monk.

Opus 7 is one of Seattle’s most critically acclaimed choirs, known for performing at “the highest level of artistry” and “one of the most esteemed musical groups anywhere”(Seattle Times, Seattle P-I). Our traditional Lenten concert presents powerful choral music for the Lenten season, including works by Howells, Parry, Szymanowski, PIzzetti, Penderecki, Imogen Holst, Lennox Berkeley, and others. Loren Pontén conducts this annual concert for the penitential season of Lent.

Please visit opus7.org and our Facebook page: Opus7Seattle for more information.

Reserved Seating is available by advance donation.

Suggested donation is $40 in advance for Preferred Seating, $25 in advance, $30 at the door for General Seating, $20 in advance, $24 at the door for Seniors and students donate as able at the door with student ID.

Seattle Children’s Chorus has been profoundly privileged to represent our city at home and abroad for over 30 years as singing ambassadors. We have celebrated Seattle as a magnificent, flourishing city for the arts. This season, we are choosing to address a heartbreaking reality impacting a great number of youth in our city: homelessness. This problem of teens, youth and young adults making Seattle’s streets their only homes is growing at an alarming rate. We have a powerful story to tell through our music. We want our choristers, audiences and supporters to join us as we look at this population of vulnerable youth. With special guests, “The Pilgrims”, a men’s chorus dedicated to performances that benefit the plight of homeless youth, we will take an honest look at the problem and sing our hopes for a brighter future.

Join us for the final concert of our inaugural season; a collaboration of local groups performing local choral music.

If you are interested in being a part of this concert please reach out by emailing info@radiance.org

In March, Choral Arts NW continues our tradition of annual masterworks by offering the most sublime and sumptuous setting of late 19th century French style – Fauré’s magnificent Requiem. We pair this icon of beauty with a bevy of glorious guest artists, our brilliant chamber orchestra, and two modern masterworks – Kevin Siegfried’s Songs for the Journey, a modern tribute to Fauré’s masterful setting, and Robert Moran’s Trinity Requiem, written in honor of the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on New York city. Combined with the splendor of CANW voices, this concert promises the finest of choral music-making celebrating the abiding themes of human experience – love, loss, and renewal.

Thirty years ago, Margriet Tindemans founded the Medieval Women’s Choir on the premise that medieval music is as accessible as it is inspiring. She believed that any choral singer could learn to sing and to love this extraordinary repertoire and, through it, gain an appreciation and understanding of the culture that created it. Three decades on, Margriet’s choir, and her vision, continue to thrive. To celebrate our 30th season, we will revisit some of medieval repertoire most closely associated with the choir, as well as new pieces written for us over the years by Seattle composers Karen Thomas and Peter Seibert; by long-time MWC collaborator Shira Kammen; and by Margriet Tindemans herself.

Home can mean different things to different people: a place, a time, heaven, a loved person. Join MCE as we explore home, and journeys toward home, through folk songs, early American hymns, spirituals, madrigals and more. It will make your heart ache for home!

Biographers gasp in wonder at Schubert’s productivity during the final year of his life. He completed the “Symphony No. 9 in C Major” (“The Great”) as well as the “C Major String Quintet,” one of the greatest chamber works ever composed. He penned six songs that wound up in the song cycle “Schwanengesang” (“Swan Song”), the three “Piano Pieces” and the last three piano sonatas.

Finally, Schubert completed his greatest choral work, the “Mass No. 6 in E-flat Major” and two related shorter anthems, the “Tantum ergo in E-Flat” and the “Offertory in B Flat,” all of which will comprise our concert program on March 14. The “Mass No. 6 in E Flat,” not performed until a year after his death, was his most ambitious work, employing his own subjective romantic feelings, and the influence of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach.

Concert will feature:
“Mass No. 6 in E-Flat, D. 950”
“Tantum ergo in E-Flat, D. 962”
“Offertory in B-Flat, ‘Intende voci,’ D. 963”

With guest artists:
Members of the North Corner Chamber Orchestra
Jennifer Bromagen, soprano
Sarah Mattox, mezzo-soprano
Zach Finkelstein, tenor
Brendan Tuohy, tenor
Charles Robert Stephens, baritone

Featuring the five choirs of Olympia Youth Chorus, this program will include favorite pieces our singers have loved performing over the last 25 years. We will also highlight our student soloists competing at the State level. This is an afternoon program suitable for all ages!
Director Sponsor: Edward Jones, Bill Peden, CFP Financial Advisor

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Love and hope can’t be constrained behind closed borders but sometimes they need a helping hand. Dramatic and inspiring stories of escape are joined by pop sounds of LGBTQ artists from across the globe including Freddie Mercury, Ricky Martin and k.d. lang.

Featuring a world premiere commission inspired by the lives of LGBTQ Muslims who settled in North America after years of seeking asylum. With music from Caldwell and Ivory, Hannah Fidler, Amir Rabiya, Mari Esabel Valverde, and Bonnie McKee, songwriter for pop music’s biggest stars.

Our youngest two choirs will delight you with songs that tell great stories, or that come from great stories, including Newfoundland folk ballads, a medley of classic Disney tunes, and hand-picked choral music to bring a children’s book to life.

Featuring Prep Choir and Fresca.

This program features Renaissance and contemporary motets dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Music by Renaissance composers Josquin, Tomás Luis de Victoria, and Palestrina are juxtaposed with music by contemporary composers Arvo Pärt and Gabriel Jackson. The centerpiece of the program are two settings of the Salve regina: the first by Renaissance English composer William Cornysh, and Gabriel Jackson's setting, based on Cornysh's setting.

Gene Stenger, Evangelist
José Rubio, Jesus
Arwen Myers, soprano
Laura Beckel Thoreson, mezzo-soprano
Brendan Tuohy, tenor
Zachary Lenox, baritone

The music of J.S. Bach has been at the core of OSSCS’s repertoire since its inception 50 years ago. Now hear a new generation interpret this supreme masterpiece.

This special concert features a collaboration with a local artist or musician, making this a don't-miss occasion! You'll hear fine choral music as well as creative collaboration with the artist. This year's partner will be announced soon!

Our advanced choirs will tell stories through song, with selections from fairy tales and folklore, books and opera, and songs that underscore the importance of each person’s story. You’ll hear Douglas Wagner’s ode to beloved children’s books “Stories of My Life,” Elizabeth Alexander’s “Let it Matter,” a call to let in other people’s stories and build relationships, Caldwell & Ivory’s “If Wishes Had Wings” about Hiroshima paper crane folder and peacemaker Sadako Sasaki, and one of the orchestra-to-vocal arrangements from Margaret Dryburgh’s prisoner-of-war choir.

Featuring Amabile, Vivace, Amore and Ensemble.

In the Northwest, we enjoy gazing into the incredible spaces around us. Whether on the edge of a bluff looking out over the Sound, on a ferry looking toward the city, on a bridge, a Space Needle or a beach, we have dramatic and beautiful vistas all around us. As our vision stretches toward the horizon, our thoughts are free to wander. The open spaces we'll sing about in this program might be real or imagined, topographical or psychological. Join us as we journey together with The Bike Let Loose, by Edie Hill and Light of a Clear Blue Morning, written by Dolly Parton (Yep, Dolly Parton), with an evocative arrangement by Craig Hella Johnson. Featured composers also include Eric Whitacre, William Hawley, Frederick Delius, Renaissance masters John Farmer and Thomas Morley plus others.

Suspend any doubts you may have about classical choral “crossover”: Carol Barnett’s The World Beloved: A Bluegrass Mass is tremendously powerful music, doing justice to both its parental musical styles. Incorporating bluegrass instruments, Barnett adapts the ancient Mass text for a modern sensibility, dealing with issues of social conscience and building community.

As Barnett blends two musical worlds, so do the composers featured in the first half of the concert. Harry Burleigh and William Dawson were among the pioneers who transferred African-American spirituals into a choral guise, a tradition later carried by Moses Hogan. Kevin Siegfried dresses nineteenth-century American Shaker tunes in sumptuous modern harmonies. Writing in the mid-twentieth century, Frenchman Maurice Duruflé went back even further for inspiration: to medieval chant.

A concert that follows the history, people, and events unique to Everett from the foundations of flight and a life by the water, to famous figures, to current loves and landmarks. We will feature local artisans at the performance hall, local musicians on stage with the Chorale, and a rich partnership with the Everett Museum of History.

January 27, 2020, marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Diverse settings of Psalm 137, “By the waters of Babylon...,” by Bach, Schein, Sweelinck, Rossi, and others, introduce the West Coast premiere of Austrian composer—and Auschwitz victim—Marcel Tyberg’s Mass in F major.

A performance of Spring repertoire of these 2 choirs ages ranging from 5th to 8th grade. Directed by Alex Gagiu & Sarra Sharif

"In 1984 I was very fortunate to visit Uganda, where a dream maker made me a beautiful drum with a snakeskin head. I'll never forget sitting in the place to come home and seeing by chance the baggage handlers loading my drum with incredible respect and care. The drum to them is a living spirit.

The poems I set are a celebration of how that spirit is brought to life. The piece enacts the ritual of constructing the drum, whose component parts are drawn from the surrounding nature - a nature that gives of itself almost sacrificially. We hear how the goat is killed for its skin, how the tree, which bleeds cedar-dark when cut, bestows the drum's body, and how the sticks and rattles are taken, all to begin a new life as companions to the gods, music and the dance." Bob Chilcott

In the Northwest, we enjoy gazing into the incredible spaces around us. Whether on the edge of a bluff looking out over the Sound, on a ferry looking toward the city, on a bridge, a Space Needle or a beach, we have dramatic and beautiful vistas all around us. As our vision stretches toward the horizon, our thoughts are free to wander. The open spaces we'll sing about in this program might be real or imagined, topographical or psychological. Join us as we journey together with The Bike Let Loose, by Edie Hill and Light of a Clear Blue Morning, written by Dolly Parton (Yep, Dolly Parton), with an evocative arrangement by Craig Hella Johnson. Featured composers also include Eric Whitacre, William Hawley, Frederick Delius, Renaissance masters John Farmer and Thomas Morley plus others.

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This spring, SilverSounds Northwest is thrilled to celebrate its 10-year anniversary with I Love Rock & Roll! What better way to commemorate a decade of fun than by revisiting their greatest hits! Favorites by The Righteous Brothers, Bob Seger, The Four Seasons, Billy Joel, and The Beach Boys are guaranteed to have your toes tappin’. And, of course, no SilverSounds show would be complete without the dancing, storytelling, and hijinks for which they are known! This year, SilverSounds extends an invitation to former members to join them onstage for several beloved favorites. It’s going to be a weekend you don’t want to miss!

KCS and Philharmonia Northwest join forces at Benaroya Hall to celebrate Beethoven's 250th anniversary year, featuring the glorious Mass in C, and the triumphant Choral Fantasy with renowned pianist Craig Sheppard. Also featuring the Seattle premiere of Jake Runestad's stunning Beethoven tribute "A Silence Haunts Me."

Selections from Aaron Copland's Old American Songs form the backbone of this concert celebrating musical Americana. Local composers Morten Lauridsen, Tim Drewes, and Marc Fitchette sit alongside historical greats William Dawson and Leonard Bernstein. Also featured will be At the Water's Edge, a cycle by Kevin Siegfried on texts by Sarah Orne Jewett.

From Earth to the far reaches of the universe, let the Ensign Symphony illuminate the darkness with fun and exhilarating and music. Inspired by a talk given by Latter-day Saint apostle and former fighter pilot, Dieter F. Uchtdorf, you will be leaving the concert with a heroic torch of inspiration.

The variety you loved on our first American Journey last spring just scratched the surface of American music, but was enough to whet our appetite for more! We’re going back on the road to sample yet more styles, including Broadway, vocal jazz, spirituals, and good old a cappella. Join us to continue our tour of places and genres in our nation’s inexhaustible musical melting pot.

April 23-25, 2020 - Emerald City sings! (SEATTLE) - a program of Ēriks Ešenvalds' music with Dr. Richard Nance serving as the Guest Conductor will include two fun and educational days of rehearsals with Dr. Nance and composer-in-residence Ēriks Ešenvalds, along with plenty of free time to enjoy the beautiful city of Seattle performing selected works by Ēriks Ešenvalds under the direction of Dr. Richard Nance, along with a performance by the Choir of the West!

KECHLEY, Psalm 100
BOULANGER, Psaume XXIV
WHITE, Psalm 46, Op. 14 [West Coast premiere]
RAVEL, Daphnis et Chloé

We close our 50th season in grand style at Benaroya Hall with jubilant psalm settings by Robert Kechley, Lili Boulanger and OSSCS music director William White. The grand finale is a rare performance of the complete score of Maurice Ravel’s dazzling “symphonie choréographique,” Daphnis et Chloé.

Our spring program shines a spotlight on our theme of CONTRASTS with works by great composers of the Classical era, including Beethoven (celebrating the 250th anniversary of his birth), plus choral works from the opposite end of the musical spectrum and World music influences. We are delighted to be joined by the White River High School Chamber Choir, Robin Howard, director.

April 30-May 2, 2020 - Emerald City sings! (SEATTLE) - a program of Jake Runestad's music with Jake also serving as the Guest Conductor will include two fun and educational days of rehearsals with composer-in-residence Jake Runestad, along with plenty of free time to enjoy the beautiful city of Seattle performing selected works by Jake Runestad, under his own direction.

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Pre-Concert Lecture 7:00 pm; 8:00 pm Concert

Please join Opus 7 as we celebrate the musical contributions of some of our region’s most prominent choral composers. This popular bi-annual event features choral works by Northwest composers, including Bern Herbolsheimer, Reginald Unterseher, Morten Lauridsen, Peter Hallock, Sean MacLean, and Opus 7’s Composer-in-Residence John Muehleisen. Opus 7 will also perform the winning compositions from this season’s Robert Scandrett Memorial Student Composer Competition.

Please visit opus7.org and our Facebook page: Opus7Seattle for more information.

Preferred Seating: $40 in advance

General Seating: $25 in advance, $30 at the door

Seniors: $20 in advance, $24 at the door

Students: Pay as able at the door with student ID

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Please join us for a performance of this beloved masterpiece of J. S. Bach. Directed by Lynn Hall.

Admission is complimentary and a free will offering will be taken to benefit Northwest Harvest.

We conclude our 27th season with an epic journey through the American songbook, featuring traditional and new hymnody and rousing spirituals. We welcome our 2019 Poet in Residence, Michael Dennis Browne, as we explore both text and sonority through readings of his poetry between our musical offerings. This ‘bright ring of words’ concludes with a world premiere collaboration between composer Kevin Siegfried and poet Michael Dennis Browne sung with joy and gusto by the inimitable Choral Arts Northwest.

The entire Seattle community is invited to help us celebrate our graduating choristers. Enjoy senior solos, the “senior song,” performances by Amore and Ensemble, and a cake reception. Free admission.

Featuring Amore and Ensemble.

Please join us for a performance of this beloved masterpiece of J. S. Bach. Directed by Lynn Hall.

Admission is complimentary and a free will offering will be taken to benefit Northwest Harvest.

Johannes Brahms’ towering masterpiece has been called a human requiem, a requiem for the living, not the dead. It runs the gamut of emotions: sorrow, comfort, hope, triumph, and finally, peace. Don’t miss Master Chorus Eastside and festival orchestra in one of the truly great works of all time.

This spring, ChoralSounds Northwest will take the audience on a musical journey from 1920 to today, as we highlight the hits of popular genres in American music. Join us as we celebrate 100 years of favorite tunes, including Tin Pan Alley, the stages of Broadway, the songs that defined the changing decades in the mid-century, and the cultural anthems at the turn of the century, culminating in the recent years of recognizable chart-toppers. Hindsight is 2020 promises to be an exciting narrative of our identity and evolution as we look back on 100 years of favorite music!

With the 2020 Summer Games right around the corner, what better way to get in the mood than with an artistic international event? Famous and acclaimed poets from seven countries are featured in this cultural celebration exploring the quintessential relationship between words and music in the choral artform. James Bassi’s Harpsonnets (Four Shakespeare Sonnets for Chorus and Harp) are a rare gem in an eclectic program that takes us from Chile to Canada, and from the U.S. to India. You won't want to miss this exotic collection of texts by some of history’s greatest wordsmiths!

British composer Ethel Smyth’s Mass in D for choir, orchestra, and soloists is a monumental achievement. Written in the mid-19th century, it was dismissed by critics who deemed female composers unequal to their male counterparts. Seattle Pro Musica hails this stunning and seldom-heard piece as more than equal.

We pair this groundbreaking work with Mozart’s beloved “Great” Mass in C minor for one performance only in the magnificent acoustic of St. James Cathedral.

This May, YouthSounds Northwest is excited to return to the stage at Glendale Lutheran Church for a Saturday afternoon performance kicking off spring in the Northwest! You won’t want to miss the delightful innocence and joy of our youngest singers as they perform this entertaining program, showcasing a wide variety of their musical skills. We hope you’ll join us and welcome the sunshine with a song and a smile!

Let us serenade you in our last performance of the year. More details to come.

Our final concert of the 25th Anniversary Season will feature all five choirs of Olympia Youth Chorus singing popular favorites from Disney, Broadway and Pop genres. Suitable for all ages!

Festival seating; season ticket holders get preferred seating.

We learn from the creativity and imaginations of children. We watch children at play and wonder over their brilliant, inventive young minds. Music, both singing and movement, seem to flow without restraint from young children. As we close our season, we present “Flights of Fancy”, a concert that invites each of our choirs to be playful, light-hearted, imaginative set to performers sharing choral settings by some of the great composers of our day. We will sing of imaginary creatures like Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky and tell of barnyards that come to life at nighttime and swings that send a child flying and planes that spin heavenward close enough to touch the face of God. You will not want to miss this experience! And like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory may I invite you to “Come with me and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination!”

Members of the Northwest Chamber Chorus have been singing for a long time. Most of us started in choir when we were in high school or earlier, and now, we truly can’t “Keep from Singing”. We'd like to pass that torch on to the next generation. In this program we are joined by students from the Tacoma School of the Arts (SOTA). We will sing side-by-side with these young musical spirits, and we expect that they will teach us as much or more than we teach them. Our collaboration includes one performance at Phinney Ridge Lutheran and one at Tacoma’s Rialto Theatre, just one block from SOTA. Featured composers will include Giselle Wyers, Margaret King, Sarah Quartel, Volckmar Leisring, Jake Runestad, Pärt Uusberg, and Randall Thompson. You’ll hear music from Zimbabwe, Estonia, South Africa, Venezuela, the German Renaissance, and Washington state. Join us as we celebrate the progress and the talents of tomorrow’s singers.

The hills are alive with the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein! You cain't say no to some of your favorite things; we promise you'll be whistling a happy tune after this show!

From The Andrews Sisters’ boogie-woogie beats to the Spice Girls’ “girl power” anthems, these supremely talented vocal groups have been the intoxicating soundtrack to life and love. Featuring songs from twenty of the biggest ensembles to grace the charts, including “Stop! In the Name of Love,” “Cruel Summer,” “Wide Open Spaces,” and “Survivor.”

Ever since the earliest days of human civilization, the ocean has captured the imagination. What is on the other side? And how can one possibly get there? Terra australis, a new work by local composer Bronwyn Edwards, our Composer-in-Residence this season, recalls those Europeans who first ventured to her native Australia, incorporating didgeridoo into the choir. Her Leonosa recounts an actual shipping vessel that took lumber from Washington to California in the 1840s. Another local composer, Michael Austin Miller, rejoices in the ancient explorers.

Of course, not all such exchanges were peaceful: Horizons, by the South African composer Peter Louis Van Dijk, movingly tells of native life that became slaughtered by European conquerors. Jaakko Mäntyjärvi’s Canticum calamitatis maritimae vividly depicts another tragedy: the sinking of the MS Estonia during a storm at sea in 1994. But rest assured that all is not dark. For example, Benjamin Britten extols St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music, who emerged from the sea. And with much lighter fare as well—particularly Across the sea from the Wailin’ Jennys—the joys of the ocean are always near.

All endings bring the hope of renewal. Musical descriptions of the Last Judgment and the Archangel Michael’s final defeat the devil include works of Scheidt, Vulpius, Gumpelzhaimer, and the Sacred Harp tradition. Jonathan Dove’s thrilling cycle, The Passing of the Year, closes our season with Tennyson’s words, “Ring in the thousand years of peace!”

For the fifth concert in our Masterworks series, ChoralSounds Northwest and VocalSounds Northwest collaborate with Northwest Symphony Orchestra to celebrate 250 years of Beethoven by performing his powerful and exquisite Mass in C, Op. 86. This earlier setting of his two masses shows Beethoven’s respect for Mozart and Haydn in this genre but also displays his own unique voice that continues to astound listeners two and a half centuries later. This performance will be offered in Burien and Bellevue.

Sergei Rachmaninoff composed two major a cappella choral works—the “Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom” and the “All-Night Vigil”—that displayed his Orthodox faith in a manner that was innovative and fresh. In 1910 he turned to the sacred service of his church and with amazing speed composed the monumental “Divine Liturgy.” Afterward he said, “Not for a long time have I written anything with such pleasure."

Less well-known is Rachmaninoff’s early choral work, “Concerto for Choir,” written in 1893. It was both a culmination of a great tradition and a starting point for so much of what followed in Russia. Such “concertos” were popular in the eighteenth century as additions to the Orthodox divine service.

The “Three Sacred Hymns” from the Orthodox liturgy were composed in 1983 by Alfred Schnittke. The Russian conductor Valery Polyansky had requested an a cappella work for his choir, and though at first Schnittke seemed reluctant, he apparently woke in the middle of the night and wrote down these three pieces, and handed the manuscript to Polyansky the following day. The work was only published posthumously.

Featured works:
“Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Op. 31” by Sergei Rachmaninoff
“Concerto for Choir, The Grave and Death Could Not Hold the Mother of God” by Sergei Rachmaninoff
“Three Sacred Hymns” by Alfred Schnittke

A fun concert to start your summer travels! We will take a road trip across the country, featuring quirky sites, car songs and regional favorites along the way. Learn some fun facts about local music traditions and flavors!

Accustomed as we are to our bustling, secular lives, it can be difficult to imagine the richness of the world that developed behind the walls of the medieval cloister. Although they were under the absolute authority of the church, women there enjoyed an agency and self-direction that were hard to come by on the outside. Their most meaningful personal relationships and an often-profound spiritual renewal were tied to that community, and this autonomous life spawned religious practices and unique musical repertoires that are little-known today. Through their music, the MWC takes you behind the walls to experience the metaphysical landscape of the sequestered life.

Our spring program is inspired by the rich cultural heritage of our choir. We’ll be performing music from Europe, South America, Africa, Asia, and more as we embrace a world united by song. Join us for an intimate evening of uplifting and moving music born in the far away lands of our ancestors.

This is our most light-hearted concert of the year! Join us for a selection of memorable and fun music performed by the chorus as well as individual members.

Ticket prices are $27 at the door; in advance, ticket prices are $22 for general admission, $20 for seniors and people with special needs, and $10 for students.

All 270 singers of Northwest Girlchoir, grades 1-12, take the stage at Benaroya Hall to celebrate how good it is to be in, and to sing in, a community, with diverse repertoire including the Jewish hymn “Hine Ma Tov,” Joan Szymko’s anti-bulllying piece “Words,” and Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi’s multi-movement Gloria with chamber orchestra, written for and first performed by the select girl pupils of the Venetian Ospedale. We’ll conclude with Jim Papoulis’ Juntos, in collaboration with projected photography from the artists of Youth in Focus.

Featuring Fresca, Amabile, Vivace, Amore, and Ensemble.

Festival seating; season ticket holders get preferred seating.

To close out the season, the Ensign Symphony & Chorus will be celebrating freedom, life, and light from throughout the world by highlighting music from many different lands and cultures.

Our spring program is inspired by the rich cultural heritage of our choir. We’ll be performing music from Europe, South America, Africa, Asia, and more as we embrace a world united by song. Join us for an intimate evening of uplifting and moving music born in the far away lands of our ancestors.

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In the 1960s, a little record label out of Detroit released a new musical sound onto the airwaves, launching the careers of some of the most successful black artists of the 20th century and forever changing America. This concert is a celebration of the greatest hits of the Motown sound and the pop, R&B and soul music that grew in its wake.

No MCE season would be complete without our popular tribute to Independence Day in Issaquah’s historic Pickering Barn, with lots of sing alongs, historical commentary, and all-American music. It’s on Friday evening this year, so come early, bring the family, and order dinner through an on-site food truck! This year’s theme: Washington state history.

Join the Mill Creek Chorale and they visit iconic and historical sights in Scotland and Ireland, either as a singer or non-singer. Contact us for more information about the available package, provided by Sechrist Travel, and join us for the musical, experience, fun, and fellowship - June 28-July 9 with an extension to London, England, returning July 12!