Program Notes
Out of Many, One
2026-2027 Season
ECSTASY / GRIEF
October 24, 2026
Featuring Schubert’s Mass No. 2 in G alongside James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross, and Artistic Director Dominick DiOrio’s Weaver of Eternities, a collaboration with Philadelphia poet Jacqueline Goldfinger.
DARK / LIGHT
December 12, 2026
Coming soon!
EAST / WEST
May 22, 2026
Coming soon!
2025-2026 Season
October 18, 2025 · Vigil for Love
The season opener features the American premiere of Artistic Director Dominick DiOrio's Vigil for Love, a ten-movement work set to a libretto by chorus member Kyle Conner. It was written in honor of former Board Chair Charlotte Sibley and features collaborative pianist Ting Ting Wong. It's paired with Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, the chorus's first self-produced opera with soloists from its own ranks since 1905.
Read the program notes.
December 13, 2025 · A Feast of Carols
Our annual holiday concert features the world premiere of Rex Isenberg's Great Miracles, a Mendelssohn Chorus commission, along with nine new Postcard Carols by Artistic Director Dominick DiOrio. Michael Moore's notes also cover holiday favorites by Handel, Mendelssohn, Praetorius and Rheinberger, and contemporary works by David Conte, Abbie Betinis, Calvin Hampton, André J. Thomas and Morten Lauridsen.
March 14, 2026 · The Space We Keep
Associate Artistic Director Heather Mitchell's farewell concert before she became Artistic Director of The Master Chorale of Tampa Bay. She described the program as a love letter to the chorus. It opened with Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel's Gartenlieder, led by the conducting apprentices, and included the premiere of A Clock Without a Craftsman by section leader Erik Potteiger, written for the occasion. The program also featured Stephen Paulus, Ēriks Ešenvalds, Kim André Arnesen, Jonathan Dove, Elgar and Michael Barrett's Modimo, and closed with Bernstein's "Make Our Garden Grow" from Candide.
June 6, 2026 · Joyful Abundance
The season finale, part of ArtPhilly's What Now: 2026 festival, features five world premieres from our Joyful Abundance Emerging Artist Commissioning Program. Each pairs an emerging composer with a poet: Leigha Amick, Adelina DiGiacomo, Baldwin Giang, Barbara Lewandowski and Ted Babcock, setting texts by Amy Beth Sisson, Haley Storm Evans, Evan Wang, Naila Francis and Octavia McBride-Ahebee. The premieres are paired with Randall Thompson's The Testament of Freedom, set to words by Thomas Jefferson.2024-2025 Season
October 26, 2024 Mass for the Endangered
The 151st season opened with the Philadelphia premiere of Sarah Kirkland Snider's Mass for the Endangered, which weaves Nathaniel Bellows's poetry about endangered species into the traditional Latin Mass. It was paired with Antonio Caldara's Baroque Missa Dolorosa.
December 7, 2024 · A Feast of Carols
The annual holiday concert featured the world premiere of The Anonymous Child by former tenor section leader Michael Robert Smith, set to a text by chorus member Kyle Conner, along with four new Postcard Carols by Dominick DiOrio, including The Chestnut Hill Carol. The chorus also reprised Texu Kim's The New Year's Magpie Song, a 2021 commission. The program ranged from Mendelssohn, Handel and Howells to Rutter, Abbie Betinis, Diane White-Clayton, and Joshua Jacobson's Hanukkah arrangement Mi Zeh Y'Maleil.
February 22, 2025 · Never One Thing
Associate Artistic Director Heather Mitchell's first concert of her own took its name from May Erlewine's song Never One Thing. The program moved between spirituals and gospel (arrangements by Damon Dandridge, Moses Hogan and Josephine Poelinitz), Romantic works by Fauré, Brahms, Schubert and Mendelssohn, and contemporary pieces by Gwyneth Walker, Vienna Teng, Ysaÿe Barnwell, Frank Ticheli and Ēriks Ešenvalds, whose Stars was accompanied by tuned water glasses.
April 5, 2025 · On the Horizon
2023-2024 Season
October 14, 2023 · We Reply to Violence
The chorus opened its 150th anniversary season with a program on music's response to violence. Joseph Haydn's Missa in tempore belli (Mass in Time of War) was paired with Joel Thompson's Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, a setting of the final words of seven Black men who were killed. The concert closed with Dominick DiOrio's We Reply, inspired by Leonard Bernstein's call to answer violence by making music.
December 9, 2023 · A Feast of Carols
The 150th anniversary season's holiday concert featured two world premieres: Marques L. A. Garrett's Magnificat, a Mendelssohn Chorus commission, and four new Postcard Carols by Dominick DiOrio. The program also included Rex Isenberg's Hear, O Israel, Bob Chilcott's Hanukkah arrangement Me zeh hidlik, Britten's A Hymn to the Virgin, Howells's A Spotless Rose, and music by Handel, Abbie Betinis and Morten Lauridsen.
February 17, 2024 · Love, Loss, Longing
April 27, 2024 · From the Echo of the Heavenly Harp
The 150th anniversary season's spring concert was framed by two works commissioned by the same English churchman, Walter Hussey: Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb and Bernstein's Chichester Psalms. Between them came Howells's Like as the Hart, César Franck's Psaume 150 and Brahms's Geistliches Lied, with organist Andrew Kotylo.
2022-2023 Season
October 15, 2022 · This Love Between Us
The 149th season, Hand in Hand, opened with Bach's Magnificat in D and Reena Esmail's This Love Between Us, which sets texts from seven religious traditions of India, from Buddhism and Sikhism to Christianity and Islam.
December 10, 2022 · A Feast of Carols
The 149th season's holiday concert launched a new tradition: the live premiere of Dominick DiOrio's first three Postcard Carols, carols commissioned by chorus supporters in honor or memory of loved ones. The program ranged from Kodály's Veni, veni Emmanuel and Mendelssohn's There Shall a Star Come Out of Jacob to contemporary works by César Alejandro Carrillo, Jocelyn Hagen and André Thomas.
March 4, 2023 · We are Waves
May 6, 2023 · A Light Has Dawned
2021-2022 Season
December 11, 2021 · A Feast of Carols
The chorus's return to live holiday singing after the pandemic was also Dominick DiOrio's first concert with the chorus as its 14th Artistic Director. It featured two world premieres: DiOrio's A Yuletide Carol, set to a poem by chorus tenor Kyle Conner, and Texu Kim's The New Year's Magpie Song, which draws on a Korean New Year's children's song. The program also included Daniel Pinkham's Christmas Cantata, Hanukkah music by Rex Isenberg and Joshua Fishbein, and works by Rutter, Diane White-Clayton, Jake Runestad and Joan Szymko.
March 17 & 19, 2022 · Our Story Is Not Over
An evening of music and poetry about grief, processing and rebuilding after the pandemic, with bass-baritone Dashon Burton and poet Elizabeth Scanlon reading from her collection Lonesome Gnosis. The chorus gave the world premiere of Dana Wilson's Pandemic and the first live performance of Melissa Dunphy's A Slice of Pie. Burton was featured in Vaughan Williams's Five Mystical Songs, Margaret Bonds's Three Dream Portraits, and excerpts from Paul Moravec's Sanctuary Road, in which he portrayed abolitionist William Still. Other works included music by Florence Price, Reena Esmail, Dale Trumbore, Andrea Ramsey, Damien Sneed, Joel Thompson and Dominick DiOrio.
May 15, 2022 · Beyond the Binary
This concert featured the world premiere of Andrea Clearfield's Beyond the Binary: A Meditation on Humans and Machines, with a libretto by Ellen Frankel. The production included electronic percussion instruments designed by David Kontak, robotic prototypes from University of Pennsylvania students, the percussion trio Square Peg Round Hole, and drag artist Cookie Diorio as "The Oracle." The first half paired works by Carlos Cordero, Gordon Hamilton, Moses Hogan, Moira Smiley and Dominick DiOrio with readings from the libretto.
2010s
March 7, 2020 Departures: Beethoven Mass in C and Choral Fantasy
December 14, 2019 A Feast of Carols
October 27, 2019 All-Night Vigil
June 28, 2019 Water Passion after St. Matthew
February 23, 2019 Deliver All Souls
December 8, 2018 A Feast of Carols
November 3, 2018 American Stories: I Believe
March 18, 2018 Beethoven/Shaw
December 9, 2017 A Feast of Carols
October 21, 2017 Voice of a War
April 29, 2017 Honegger’s “King David”
February 26, 2017 Big Sing: American Stories
December 10, 2016 A Feast of Carols
March 5, 2016 Eastern Voices
December 12, 2015 A Feast of Carols 2015
June 27, 2015 Beginnings…
June 27, 2015 TURBINE
February 8, 2015 St. Matthew Passion
December 13, 2014 A Feast of Carols 2014
October 26, 2014 BiG SING 2014
April 26, 2014 Anthracite Fields
February 23, 2014 The Sound of Spirit: Pärt/Haydn
December 14, 2013 A Feast of Carols
October 25, 2013 Kimmel Center Organ Concert
May 11 & 19, 2013 Haydn’s The Creation
February 23 & 24, 2013 Beethoven and Gill
December 9 & 15, 2012 Angels from on High
October 21, 2012 Trinity: Moran and Bruckner
April 29, 2012 RITUALS: East/West
February 12, 2012 Unfinished Masterpieces
December 8 & 10, 2011 Golden Voices of the East
October 22, 2011 Northern Lights and Mystical Masterpieces
February 27, 2011 the audience inCHOIRing
2000s
December 11, 2010 A Feast of Carols 2010
October 24, 2010 BIGSING//Brahms
April 24, 2010 Missa Latina pro pace
December 12, 2009 A Feast of Carols
October 17, 2009 rewind//PLAY//fastforward
March 29, 2009 Verdi Requiem + Higdon Premiere
December 13, 2008 From Heaven on High
March 8, 2008 Honegger King David
November 3, 2007 On the Transmigration of Souls
April 21, 2007 Mendelssohn Elijah
December 16, 2006 Respighi Laud to the Nativity
November 17 & 18, 2006 Leah Stein’s Carmina Burana
May 7, 2006 Clearfield The Golem Psalms Bloch Sacred Service Avodath Hakodesh
December, 2005 Hancock, Paulus, St. Pierre, Rudolph, Whitacre
October 5, 2005 Beethoven, Sherman, Schubert, Cherubini
December 18, 2004 A Feast of Carols
October 30, 2004 Mozart’s Wedding Gift Mozart, St. Pierre, Monk
March 28, 2004 Carmina Burana and Cantata Profan Krush, Bartók, Orff
October 25, 2003 High Bridge Fussell, Vaughan Williams, Marshall
May 3, 2003 War and Peace Fussell, Boatrite, Haydn
March 8, 2003 Voices of the Last Seal Palestrina, Bruckner, Moran
December 13 & 14, 2002 Love Came Down at Christmas
October 19, 2002 Touch the Angel’s Hand
April 6, 2002 Krzysztof Penderecki St. Luke Passion
December 14 & 15, 2001 What Sweeter Music: An English Christmas
October 21, 2001 Schoenberg A Survivor From Warsaw Brahms A German Requiem
1990s
October 29, 2000 English Giants
March 26, 2000 Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart
October 23, 1999 Beethoven, Merryman, St. Pierre
May 1, 1999 A Singing World
March 14, 1999 Verdi Requiem
October 24, 1998 Handel Israel in Egypt
December 13 & 14, 1997 A Feast of Carols
October 18, 1997 Music from the French Cathedral
July 2, 1997 Honegger King David Poulenc Gloria
May 11, 1997 Psalms and Songs
March 9, 1997 Mendelssohn Elijah
December 1996 Celestial Seasons
May 6, 1995 The Forgotten
About our Program Notes
Program Notes Writer Michael Moore has served as Mendelssohn Chorus's program editor and annotator since 1988. His program notes have been reprinted by such organizations as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Memphis Symphony, the Berkshire Music Festival, Britain’s Windsor Festival, Temple University, Indiana University, the University of Delaware, Emory University and Haverford College, and by choruses across the country. He has written program notes for the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and liner notes for the 2008 recording of Charles Fussell’s Wilde Symphony, released by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the 2012 recording Metamorphosis, a compilation of Mendelssohn Chorus commissions released on the Innova label. A member of the bass section, Michael has sung with Mendelssohn Chorus since 1985. He has also acted as the chorus’s historian and digital archivist since 2020.