Our 2024-2025 Season
Oct 25-27, 2024
TESORI DORATI
Dec 13-15, 2024
GAUDETE
Feb 28-Mar 2
FROM TALLIS TO TAVENER
May 2-4, 2025
BRILLIANT BACH
Our 54th season showcases our signature sound in music from the Renaissance to the 21st century as we welcome acclaimed Bay Area choral conductor Magen Solomon as our interim artistic director. We begin with a selection of exquisite works by familiar and lesser-known composers of the Italian Baroque, including Vivaldi, Monteverdi, Salamone Rossi, and Domenico Zipoli. For the holidays, guest conductor Derek Tam leads us in a delightful program that celebrates how composers from across the centuries—from Praetorius and Schütz to Britten and Poulenc—set the same nativity texts in beautiful, yet profoundly different ways. Our third concert features music from 500 years of Britain’s rich choral tradition, including works by Thomas Tallis, Benjamin Britten, Imogen Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells, and John Tavener. We conclude the season with a program that showcases Bach’s brilliant borrowings from his predecessors and his own earlier work, and how he ingeniously reimagined this material in his Missa Brevis in G major, the double-choir motet Der Geist hilft, and the beloved cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden.
Please note our new concert start times of 7:30pm for Friday and Saturday evenings.
Oct 25–27
Portrait of Salamone Rossi
Tesori Dorati
Diverse Voices from the Italian Baroque
Friday, October 25, 2024, *7:30pm*
— St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, 1111 O’Farrell, San Francisco
Saturday, October 26, 2024, *7:30pm*
— First Congregational Church, 1985 Louis Rd, Palo Alto
Sunday, October 27, 2024, 4pm
— *Venue Change*
— St. John's Presbyterian, 2727 College Avenue, Berkeley
Our season begins with “Golden Treasures,” by familiar and lesser-known Italian composers of the Baroque. You’ll enjoy enchanting madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi and psalm settings by Salamone Rossi, unique among Baroque composers for his settings of Hebrew texts. We round out the program with two full-length sacred works: Vivaldi’s beloved Magnificat and the rarely heard, richly polyphonic Missa Encarnación by Domenico Zipoli, an Italian composer who lived and worked in South America. We’ll be joined by stellar soloists and accompanied by members of the Jubilate Baroque Orchestra—a program of the San Francisco Early Music Society.
Dec 13–15
“The Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi”, by Pseudo-Jacopino di Francesco, circa 1325-1330
Gaudete
A Christmas Dialogue Across Centuries
Friday, December 13, 2024, *7:30pm*
— St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, 500 De Haro, SF
Saturday, December 14, 2024, *7:30pm*
— First Presbyterian Church, 1140 Cowper St, Palo Alto
Sunday, December 15, 2024, 4pm
— First Congregational Church, 2330 Durant, Berkeley
Our annual holiday concerts are a popular Bay Area tradition and a wonderful way to celebrate this season of contemplation, wonder, and joy. This year, under the direction of guest conductor Derek Tam, we pair Renaissance and Baroque settings of nativity texts with 20th- and 21st-century composers’ renderings of the same texts. Immerse yourself in the beauty of works by Michael Praetorius, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Jacobus Clemens non Papa, Heinrich Schütz, Benjamin Britten, Francis Poulenc, Thad Jones, and Francis Melville. The program is framed by two Ave Marias—one a medieval chant, the other a ravishing setting by the 20th-century German choral master Franz Biebl. This year, we’ll end our concert with a special holiday treat: an invitation to our audiences to join us in singing the beloved carol “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.”
Feb 28-
Mar 2
Worcester Cathedral, by Benjamin Williams Leader (1831–1923)
From Tallis to Tavener
Five Centuries of British Choral Music
Friday, February 28, 2025, *7:30pm*
— St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, 1111 O’Farrell, San Francisco
Saturday, March 1, 2025, *7:30pm*
— All Saints’ Episcopal Church, 555 Waverley, Palo Alto
Sunday, March 2, 2025, 4pm
— St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft, Berkeley
In our third concert of the season, we’ll explore the rich and varied history of British choral music from the early Renaissance to “yesterday,” with works by great composers both beloved and unexplored, including Thomas Tallis, Benjamin Britten, Imogen Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells, and John Tavener.
May 2-4
Tenor voice for Christ lag in Todesbanden, from Martin Luther’s Walthersches Gesangbuch (1524)
Brilliant Bach
Borrowings and Transformations
Friday, May 2, 2025, *7:30pm*
— St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, 500 De Haro, SF
Saturday, May 3, 2025, *7:30pm*
— All Saints’ Episcopal Church, 555 Waverley, Palo Alto
Sunday, May 4, 2025, 4pm
— St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 2300 Bancroft, Berkeley
Throughout his career, Bach borrowed extensively from other composers, from sacred music traditions, and from his own earlier works. His great genius was not simply in quoting these sources, but in transforming them in remarkably inventive ways. Our program includes Bach’s Missa Brevis in G Major, all six movements of which are based on earlier Bach cantatas, and his double-choir motet Der Geist hilft, which includes a hymn by Martin Luther. We will close with Bach’s beloved Cantata No. 4, Christ lag in Todesbanden. Tracing the journey of the tune on which it’s based, we will perform the Victimae paschali laudes chant and offer examples of its evolution through diverse settings of the chorales Christ ist erstanden and further into Christ lag in Todesbanden. The program culminates with Bach’s astonishing cantata, in which the composer brilliantly transformed the Christ lag melody in each of the seven movements, creating a world of textures, colors, and moods.
The choir, fall 2017. Photo by Will Toft.