Westminster Symphonic Choir Announces 2016-2017 Season

The Westminster Symphonic Choir will continue its tradition of performing choral/orchestral masterworks with some of the world’s leading orchestras during the 2016-2017 season.

The Choir will open its year with a performance of Mozart’s Mass in C Minor with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, in Verizon Hall in the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. Concerts are Thursday, Sept. 29, at 8 p.m.; Saturday, Oct. 1, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 2, at 2 p.m. Learn more at www.philorch.org

In November it will collaborate with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin in performances of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. Concerts will be Thursday, Nov. 10, at 8 p.m.; Friday, Nov. 11, at 2 p.m.; and Saturday, Nov., 12 at 8 p.m. in Verizon Hall in the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. They will perform the same work on Tuesday, Nov. 15, at 8 p.m. at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Learn more at www.philorch.org

Friday, Feb. 3, 2017, Joe Miller will conduct the Choir in a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Vespers at St. Paul the Apostle Church in New York City. The performance of this a cappella work is part of the New York Philharmonic’s Beloved Friend – Tchaikovsky and His World Festival.  Learn more at www.nyphil.org.

In March, the Symphonic Choir will perform Benjamin Britten’s monumental War Requiem with The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit in Verizon Hall in the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia.  Britten’s response to the travesty and destruction of war was composed to consecrate England’s Coventry Cathedral in 1962, newly rebuilt after being destroyed in a Nazi bombing. It features chorus and soprano singing the traditional Latin Mass, constantly interrupted by a chamber orchestra and male voices singing in English. Performances will be Thursday, March 23, at 8 p.m.; Friday, March 24, at 2 p.m.; and Saturday, March 25, at 8 p.m. Learn more at www.philorch.org.

The final concerts of the season will be with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert, who was the 2016 Westminster Choir College Commencement speaker. They will present a concert titled “Ode to Joy,” which will include Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw. Performances will be in Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall Wednesday, May 3, at 7:30 p.m.; Thursday, May 4, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, May 5, at 8 p.m.; Saturday, May 6, at 8 p.m. and Tuesday, May 9, at 7:30 p.m. Learn more at www.nyphil.org.

Composed of students at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, the Westminster Symphonic Choir has recorded and performed with major orchestras under virtually every internationally acclaimed conductor of the past 81 years. Its first major collaboration was in 1934 when Leopold Stokowski brought the Philadelphia Orchestra to Princeton to perform Bach’s Mass in B Minor with the Westminster Symphonic Choir in the Princeton University Chapel to celebrate the opening of the Westminster Choir College campus. Recognized as one of the world’s leading choral ensembles, the choir has sung more than 350 performances with the New York Philharmonic alone.  Recent seasons have included performances of Bernstein’s Mass with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin; Berg's Wozzeck with the London Philharmonia and Esa-Pekka Salonen; Villa-Lobos' Choros No. 10 and Estévez’ Cantata Criolla with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela and Gustavo Dudamel; Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and Daniel Barenboim and Rouse’s Requiem with the New York Philharmonic and Alan Gilbert.

Performances with the Westminster Symphonic Choir are defining milestones in the musical lives of Westminster alumni.