Throughout history, people have turned to choral music to contemplate themselves and their place in the universe. This season continues that ongoing exploration, celebrating the profound creativity that shapes choral music’s legacy and its future, inviting listeners into the radiant depths, where sound becomes a space for discovery and the boundary between past and present begins to dissolve.

Through a blend of contemporary and historical repertoire, Voices of Ascension’s 37th season spans the Renaissance to newly commissioned works and rarely heard masterworks, reflecting both the breadth of the tradition and the depth of expression that defines it. The season introduces Choral Visionaries, bringing today’s most compelling choral conductors into collaboration with the ensemble and opening new artistic perspectives for the future of Voices of Ascension.

Subscriptions are on sale April 23. Single tickets for all shows will go on sale July 1, 2026

Grand Choral Opening:
War & Requiem

Voices of Ascension Chorus and Orchestra
Dennis Keene, Artistic Director and Conductor

Thursday, October 29, 2026, 7:30 pm
Church of the Ascension

Voices of Ascension opens its 2026–2027 season with a program that matches musical grandeur with profound humanistic depth. Composed amid the threat of Napoleon’s advancing armies, Mass in Time of War (Missa in tempore belli) by Joseph Haydn pulses with urgency. Its insistent timpani (also called the Paukenmesse, or “drums mass”) and bold choral writing transform the Mass into both a plea for mercy and a rallying cry for courage in the face of autocracy. Nearly a century later, Gabriel Fauré took a strikingly different path with his Requiem in D Minor. Where earlier Requiems summon fear of judgment, Fauré turns toward grace, tenderness and light.

Candelight Christmas

Voices of Ascension
Dennis Keene, Artistic Director and Conductor

December 9, 10, 14, 15, 2026 at 7:30 pm
Church of the Ascension

Now in its 37th year, Voices of Ascension’s Candlelight Christmas Concerts continue a cherished New York holiday ritual. Beneath the warm shimmer of candlelight, this annual celebration gathers audiences for music that reflects winter, wonder, and shared tradition. Illuminated by scores of candelabras and nearly 600 candles, the church becomes a radiant setting for ancient carols, Christmas choral anthems, seasonal masterworks, and beloved family favorites.

Sound Out of Silence

James McVinnie, Organ
Voices of Ascension

Thursday, January 7, 2027 at 7:30 pm
Church of the Ascension

One of the most sought-after organists in contemporary music, James McVinnie, joins Voices of Ascension for the world premiere of Nico Muhly’s Nativity Cycle. Conceived as a companion to his Seven O Antiphon Preludes, Muhly’s seven-part cycle — written especially for Voices of Ascension, the Manton Memorial Organ, and James McVinnie — unfolds as a meditation on the texts and melodies of the Christmas liturgy, moving from anticipation toward arrival. The program opens with Pérotin’s Viderunt Omnes, one of the defining works of 12th-century organum, and culminates with Tristan Perich’s Infinity Gradient, in a concert that traces a line from the earliest flowering of Western polyphony to the outer edge of contemporary sound, exploring how music emerges from silence and takes shape in space. A sonically profound, immersive concert experience, it invites us to encounter sound not only as something heard, but as something physical, unfolding within and around the body.

Requiem Aeternam: Kathy Saltzman Romey

Voices of Ascension
Kathy Saltzman Romey, Guest Conductor

Thursday, February 18, 2027 at 7:30 pm
Church of the Ascension

As part of Voices of Ascension’s new Choral Visionaries series, Voices welcomes Kathy Saltzman Romey, long-time Director of Choral Activities at the University of Minnesota and Artistic Director of the Minnesota Chorale. A frequent collaborator with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Oregon Bach Festival, and the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, and a long-time collaborator of Helmuth Rilling, Romey brings international depth and authority to this searching meditation on mortality and transcendence.

At the heart of the program is Hugo Distler’s rarely heard Totentanz (“Dance of Death”), presented in a theatrically staged performance. In this stark and expressionistic work, Death summons figures from every walk of life to account for themselves, confronting each with the limits of power, status, and certainty.

The program culminates in Herbert Howells’s Requiem, a work of profound stillness and consolation that brings the evening to a luminous and deeply felt conclusion. Johannes Brahms’s Warum? (“Why?”) frames the program’s searching spirit, while Knut Nystedt’s Immortal Bach offers a moment of suspended reflection along the way.

Sing Joyfully! Tallis, Byrd & the English Renaissance

Voices of Ascension
Dennis Keene, Artistic Director and Conductor

Thursday, March 11, 2027, 7:30 pm
Church of the Ascension

This program explores the luminous artistry of the English Renaissance, featuring masterworks by Thomas Tallis and William Byrd: two composers whose music shaped the sound of sacred choral tradition for generations. Voices of Ascension, under the direction of Dennis Keene, brings these timeless works to life with clarity, warmth, and expressive depth.

Bach: Mass in B Minor

Voices of Ascension Chorus and Orchestra
Dennis Keene, Artistic Director and Conductor

Thursday, April 15, 2027, 7:30 pm
Church of the Ascension

This pillar of choral literature is one of the greatest works ever written by one of Western music’s greatest composers. Johann Sebastian Bach’s monumental Mass in B Minor stands as the culmination of a lifetime devoted to sacred music, an extraordinary synthesis of devotion and compositional mastery.