Cantate’s 2024-2025 40th Anniversary Concert Season
Cantate proudly presents our 2024-2025 season, celebrating 40 years of building community through choral music. This exceptional season builds upon Cantate’s tradition of innovative programming, featuring large-scale works and intimate evenings, choral chestnuts alongside new compositions, and exciting collaborations that explore and expand the choral canon.
A Winter’s Night
Sunday, December 8, 2024 • 5:00 p.m.
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
6601 Bradley Blvd, Bethesda, MD 20817
Cantate Chamber Singers returns to a long-time favorite, Britten’s Ceremony of Carols for chorus and harp, alongside John Muehleisen’s beautiful cycle, This Night, for the same pairing. The program is completed with seasonal miniatures by Jennifer Higdon, Morten Lauridsen, Nathaniel Dett, and more, to set the stage for a contemplative and joyous holiday season.
Journey
Sunday, March 9, 2025 • 5:00 p.m.
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
6601 Bradley Blvd, Bethesda, MD 20817
The first half of this program showcases our talented Lift Every Voice scholars as, with a chamber orchestra, they perform highlights of oratorio repertoire prepared and polished during their residency with Cantate. In the second half of the program, Cantate Concert Choir shares Ola Gjeilo’s Dreamweaver and Jake Runestad’s The Secret of the Sea, which take us on beautiful, fantastical, and profound journeys of exploration.
Sacred Places
Saturday, April 5, 2025 • 5:00 p.m.
Christ Episcopal Church
4001 Franklin St, Kensington, MD 20895
Cantate Chamber Singers, joined by string quartet and piano, explore themes of compassion and hope in the face of injustice. Caroline Shaw’s To the Hands addresses immigrant crises. Based on a Jewish service, Alex Berko’s Sacred Place “is an ecological service that connects the old with the new, the sacred with the secular, and the individual with their community,” according to the composer. The program is completed by two stunning works from Ola Gjeilo.
Heal
Saturday, May 17, 2025 • 5:00 p.m.
Church of the Epiphany
1317 G St NW, Washington, DC 20005
Capital City Symphony and Cantate Concert Choir unite to share a musical meditation on times of trouble in our human experience and the path to healing. Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms depicts life-affirming hope for brotherhood and peace, and Carlos Simon’s Brea(d)th provides a “moving, yearning, admonition for repair” in response to the death of George Floyd. The powerful spoken words – performed by librettist Marc Bamuthi Joseph – reflect on sacrifice, loss, and strength and call for a better tomorrow.
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.