2023-2024 Concert Season

For concerts from previous seasons, click here.

Winter 2023

Beauties Joynd Together: Music of the British Isles

Saturday, Dec 2, 2023, 8 PM
First Church Cambridge
11 Garden St
Cambridge, MA

Sunday, Dec 3, 2023, 3 PM
Grace Episcopal Church
76 Eldredge St
Newton, MA

A banquet of choral works by British composers from the Renaissance through the 21st century. Our program included William Byrd’s transcendent Ne irascaris, Domine, William Harris’s gorgeous Faire Is the Heaven, and Jonathan Dove’s scintillating Ring Out, Wild Bells, plus an array of pieces by Vaughan Williams, Purcell, Goss, Bairstow, Poston, and O’Regan.

 
 
 

Spring 2024

Music for Double Choir

We invite you to encounter the beauty and complexity of music written for two choruses, featuring Frank Martin’s enthralling Mass for Double Choir

Originally written as a personal devotion—“a matter between God and myself”—Frank Martin's Mass remained hidden from public view for 40 years before the composer allowed its premiere in 1963. The Mass fuses aspects of Renaissance polyphony with modern harmonic and rhythmic expression.  As the musical world honors the 50th anniversary of Martin’s death, experience the awe, anguish, and hope of this sublimely human work. 

We also present Bach’s dazzling Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied (Sing to the Lord a New Song), whose scoring for double choir is exploited to its full potential. Bach’s kaleidoscopic array of textures sees his two choruses echo, support, contrast, compete, and, finally, unite.

Completing our program are two shorter double chorus works: Raffaella Aleotti’s Surge, propera amica mea (Arise, My Love), written circa 1593; and the world premiere of Andrés Ballesteros’ Ave Maria. A local composer and Jameson Singers tenor, Ballesteros entwines ceremonial Latin in one choir with a more personal and subdued Spanish in the other, creating an exquisite meditation on grief.

Saturday, May 4, 2024, 8 PM
First Church Cambridge
11 Garden St
Cambridge, MA

Sunday, May 5, 2024, 3 PM
Second Church in Newton
60 Highland St
West Newton, MA