Cantate’s 2025–2026 Concert Season
Cantate’s 2025-2026 season draws its name from powerful texts our choirs will interpret throughout the year. Ancient manuscripts, classical poetry, and newspaper headlines; canonical masterworks, choral favorites, and a brand-new commission call on us to raise our collective voice for commemoration and celebration, justice, and joy.
Season Subscriptions Are Now Available!
Purchase tickets to all six concerts for the price of five.
Explore Individual Tickets:
Consider
Saturday, October 25, 2025 • 7:00 p.m.
Sunday, October 26, 2025 • 4:00 p.m.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Rockville
100 Welsh Park Drive, Rockville MD 20850
In partnership with the Rock Creek Singers of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, Cantate Chamber Singers presents Craig Hella Johnson’s fusion oratorio Considering Matthew Shepard, the acclaimed composer’s evocative and compassionate musical response to the murder of a young gay man. Setting texts by poets including Michael Dennis Browne, Lesléa Newman, Hildegard of Bingen, and Rumi as well as passages from Matt’s personal journal, remarks from his parents Judy and Dennis Shepard, and newspaper reports, the “powerfully cathartic” work “leads us from horror and grief to a higher understanding of the human condition, enabling us to endure” (The Washington Post).
Celebrate
Sunday, December 14, 2025 • 5:00 p.m.
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
6601 Bradley Blvd, Bethesda, MD 20817
Join Cantate Concert Choir, baritone Anthony D. Anderson, and a chamber orchestra for a classic choral holiday celebration featuring beloved choruses from Handel’s Messiah, together with Vaughan Williams’ gorgeous Fantasia on Christmas Carols and more joyous holiday music by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, Dan Forrest, and Shawn Kirchner. Cantate’s 2025-2026 cohort of Lift Every Voice fellows elevates the evening with a selection of dazzling seasonal oratorio solos polished during their residency with Cantate.
Believe
Saturday, January 31, 2026 • 5:00 p.m.
Christ Episcopal Church
4001 Franklin St, Kensington, MD 20895
What does it mean to believe? What do we believe, and how do we act on that belief? Cantate Chamber Singers explores, challenges, and builds on this theme in a concert featuring powerful and haunting music: Credo by Margaret Bonds, If I Am Silent by David Lang, and more, with texts taken from the Hebrew Bible, the Latin Credo, and poets Alfred Kreymborg, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Langston Hughes. Featuring soprano Melissa Wimbish and bass-baritone VaShawn Savoy McIlwain-Lightfoot.
Yearn
Saturday, March 7, 2026 • 5:00 p.m.
St. Paul’s United Methodist Church
10401 Armory Ave, Kensington, MD 20895
This program by Cantate Concert Choir presents themes of separation and yearning with Maurice Duruflé’s haunting Requiem as the centerpiece. This chant-based masterwork, focused on peace and forgiveness, is complemented by Alan Hovhaness’s From the End of the Earth, Shruthi Rajasekar’s A Heart in Port, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s By the Waters of Babylon. Featuring baritone James Rogers, mezzo-soprano Magdalena Wór, and organist Marvin Mills.
Stand
Saturday, April 25, 2025 • 5:00 p.m.
Christ Episcopal Church
4001 Franklin St, Kensington, MD 20895
An evening with Cantate Chamber Singers, string quintet, and piano centers on Joel Thompson’s powerful Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, which enshrines and amplifies the last words of Black men killed by police violence. This incisive work is partnered with musical invocations of peace and comfort – Caroline Mallonee’s aching unaccompanied Dona Nobis Pacem; All Things Common and Blessed are They by Tarik O’Regan, In Paradisum by Ēriks Ešenvalds, and an exciting new commission from Cantate’s Young Composers’ Competition Winner Josíah Garza – to unite and inspire.
Rise
Saturday, May 9, 2026 • 5:00 p.m.
Church of the Epiphany
1317 G St NW, Washington, DC 20005
Our season finale, a collaboration between Cantate Concert Choir and Capital City Symphony, lifts us toward joy and shared humanity. In Beethoven’s iconic Symphony No. 9, we find hope, friendship, and a radiant Ode to Joy. The program opens with beloved choral miniatures by Felix Mendelssohn, Gabriel Fauré, and Ingrid Stölzel that remind us of music’s power to uplift and bring us together. Featuring exceptional vocal soloists including Jennifer Casey Cabot, soprano, and Cara Schaefer, mezzo-soprano.
Cantate seeks to maintain an equitable, safe and welcoming environment for all who participate in its various activities and functions, both in-person and virtually. We welcome musicians and volunteers of diverse backgrounds, abilities, and creeds, and strive to create an inclusive and creatively stimulating community. Therefore, discrimination and harassment of any nature will not be tolerated.