Cantate: About Us

This season, Cantate proudly enters its 41st year of building community through choral music. The 30-member Cantate Chamber Singers performs a broad range of choral literature of the past five centuries, championing neglected masterpieces and 20th- and 21st-century music, including premieres of choral works commissioned from young and diverse composers. Cantate Concert Choir, comprising more than 100 voices, presents larger works, often in collaboration with area orchestras, including the National Philharmonic, Alexandria Symphony Orchestra, and Capital City Symphony. In partnership with Montgomery College, Cantate presents the annual Summer Choral Institute, offering voice-building, choral training, and performance opportunities to singers from across the D.C. region. Committed to fostering and promoting the work of emerging talent as well as expanding the canon of choral music, its participant base, and its audiences, Cantate also offers the Lift Every Voice oratorio fellowship for pre-professional singers and the biennial Young Composers’ Competition, both of which provide paid opportunities for performance, training, and advancement to emerging artists.

Founded in 1984 by Phyllis Isaacson, and performing under the direction of Gisèle Becker from 1994 to 2019, Cantate is now led by its third Artistic Director, Victoria Gau, well known in the Washington metropolitan area as a choral, orchestral, and operatic conductor, vocal coach, and music educator.

Cantate: About Us

Our Ensembles

Our Staff

Our Board