Sept 2023

Anniversary Celebration Concert & Gala Fundraiser Reception

  • Sunday, September 24, 2023, 3 PM
    St. Mark’s Cathedral, 1245 10th Ave. East, Seattle, WA 98102

Highlights include:

  • Past and present Artistic Directors Richard Sparks, Robert Bode, and Timothy Westerhaus
  • Serena Chin, accompanist
  • Namarea Randolph-Yosea, tenor
  • Lee Thompson, piano

Choral Arts Northwest celebrates its 30th season with a retrospective of music performed by a reunion of current and alumni Choral Arts NW singers. Founding  artistic director Richard Sparks leads music by Rheinberger, jazz settings of Shakespeare by George Shearing, and Rutter’s Hymn to the Creator of Light.

Emeritus artistic director Robert Bode leads music by Williametta Spencer, Eric William Barnum, and William Averitt, and arrangements of Deep River and Shenandoah.

Tim Westerhaus leads Adolphus Hailstork’s cantata I Will Lift up Mine Eyes, featuring
tenor soloist Namarea Randolph-Yosea, and closes with A Unified Prayer by B.E. Boykin.

A festive Gala Reception follows this anniversary concert. We’ll toast our 30-year history of transformational choral music and welcome attendees to be part of our future as we share plans beyond the 2023-2024 season. All audience members are encouraged to reserve a Concert+Gala ticket, which includes admission to the concert & reception.

Concert ONLY tickets $25 Advanced purchase/$35 At-the Door. Concert+Gala for $50-$225.

As a part of our commitment to equity, we offer multiple payment options to ensure that our audiences can choose the price type that best fits their financial situation. Requests for complimentary tickets may be made to info@choralartsnw.org

 

Nov 2023

Canto a la Vida | I Sing to Life

Music of Remembrance from the Spanish Renaissance & El Día de los Muertos

Saturday November 4, 7:30 p.m. Sunday, November 5, 3 p.m.
  • Saturday, November 4, 2023, 7:30 PM
    St. Thomas Medina, 8398 NE 12th St, Medina, WA 98039
  • Sunday, November 5, 2023, 3 PM
    Sea Mar Museum of Chicano/a/Latino/a Culture, 9635 Des Moines Memorial Drive South, Seattle, WA 98118

Highlights include:

  • Tomás Luis de Victoria: Officium Defunctorum (1605 Requiem)
  • Music celebrating El Día de los Muertos from Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, United States, and Venezuela
  • Classical & folkloric guitarist Elizabeth Brown
Choral Arts Northwest celebrates the light of life and remembrance through music from Spanish-speaking regions of the world, beginning with Tomás Luis de Victoria’s sublime Requiem, Officium Defunctorum (1605), one of the all-time great settings of the Requiem text, and continuing with lively Latin American songs accompanied by guitar and percussion. Canto a la Vida concludes with festive music in the spirit of El Día de los Muertos from Argentina, Cuba, Mexico,  United States, and Venezuela, and features composers Calixto Álvarez, Modesta Bor, Vicente Chavarria, Carlos Cordero, Nico Gutiérrez, Abundio Martínez, Astor Piazzolla, and Diana Syrse.

Tickets $25 Advanced purchase/$35 At-the Door.

As a part of our commitment to equity, we offer multiple payment options to ensure that our audiences can choose the price type that best fits their financial situation. Requests for complimentary tickets may be made to info@choralartsnw.org

Saturday November 4, 7:30 p.m. Sunday, November 5, 3 p.m.

Dec 2023

Northwest Solstice: Mid-Winter Songs

Shine warm a little longer!

Buy Tickets-Saturday, December 16, 7:30 p.m. Buy Tickets-Sunday, December 17, 3 p.m.
  • Saturday, December 16, 2023, 7:30 PM
    Plymouth Church Seattle, 1217 6th Ave, Seattle, WA 98101
  • Sunday, December 17, 2023, 3 PM
    St. Thomas Medina, 8398 NE 12th St, Medina, WA 98039

Highlights include:

  • Morten Lauridsen’s Mid-Winter Songs
  • Serena Chin, accompanist
  • Seasonal settings by Jessica French, Abbie Betinis, Joel Thompson, Alexander Lloyd Blake, Saunder Choi, Linda Kachelmeier, and Toby Young

Morten Lauridsen’s enchanting Mid-Winter Songs form the center of this program, evoking hope and possibility for renewal in the blue nights of winter with a cyclic setting of Robert Graves’s poetry. Additional repertoire includes a variety of solstice and winter-themed settings by Northwest (and beyond!) composers, all selections to warm the long nights of winter with joy, celebration, and community.

Join us for a weekend of stirring music to embrace and sustain our spirits.

Tickets $25 Advanced purchase/$35 At-the Door, student and other discounts available by advanced purchase

As a part of our commitment to equity, we offer multiple payment options to ensure that our audiences can choose the price type that best fits their financial situation. Requests for complimentary tickets may be made to info@choralartsnw.org

Buy Tickets-Saturday, December 16, 7:30 p.m. Buy Tickets-Sunday, December 17, 3 p.m.

 

March 2024

The Lost Birds: An Extinction Elegy

Christopher Tin, composer

Saturday, March 16, 7:30 p.m. Sunday, March 17, 3 p.m.
  • Saturday, March 16, 2024, 7:30 PM
    Trinity Lutheran, 6215 196th St SW, Lynnwood, WA 98036
  • Sunday, March 17, 2024, 3 PM – LIVESTREAMED: Register HERE
    St. Mark’s Cathedral, 1245 10th Ave E, Seattle, WA 98102

Concert highlights:

  • Collaboration with Birds Connect Seattle to raise awareness regarding protecting birds by expanding our tree canopy, eliminating bird-window and building collisions, and reducing the use of toxic pesticides in our region
  • CANW Chamber Orchestra
  • Northwest premiere of the choral version of The Lost Birds, recorded by Voces8
  • Northwest Boychoir Apprentices (March 17th concert only)
    Benjamin Kromholtz, Associate Music Director & Taylor Hyde, Apprentices Director

Choral Arts Northwest presents the Pacific Northwest premiere of the Grammy-nominated composition by Christopher Tin, The Lost Birds. In the composer’s words: “The Lost Birds is a musical memorial to bird species driven to extinction by humankind. Sweeping and elegiac, it’s a haunting tribute to those soaring flocks that once filled our skies, but whose songs have since been silenced. It’s a celebration of their feathered beauty: their symbolism as messengers of hope, peace, and renewal. But it’s also a warning about our own tenuous existence on the planet: that the fate that befell these once soaring flocks foreshadows our own extinction.”

This concert opens with music that depicts birds’ multifaceted inspiration of humans by composers Abbie Betinis, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sarah Quartel, and Caroline Shaw, and includes, on March 17th, our special guests the Northwest Boychoir Apprentices.

Tickets $25 Advanced purchase/$35 At-the Door, student and other discounts available by advanced purchase

As a part of our commitment to equity, we offer multiple payment options to ensure that our audiences can choose the price type that best fits their financial situation. Requests for complimentary tickets may be made to info@choralartsnw.org

Saturday, March 16, 7:30 p.m. Sunday, March 17, 3 p.m.

April 2024

Annual CANW Variety Show

Saturday, April 20, 7 p.m.
  • Saturday, April 20, 2024, 7 PM
    Rooftop Brewing Company@1220 W Nickerson St, Seattle, WA 98119

Experience the lighter side of the CANW community with clever and comic performances by our choristers, a dessert raffle, and a flowing selection of beer and wine. While the libations are plentiful, seating is limited so please secure your tickets now! Tickets are $35 and include wine/beer. We hope to see you there!

Note: This event is for ages 21+

Saturday, April 20, 7 p.m.

May 2024

Malhaar: A Requiem for Water

Reena Esmail, Composer-in-Residence

Saturday, May 11, 7:30 p.m. Sunday, May 12, 3 p.m.
  • Saturday, May 11, 2024, 7:30 PM
    Bastyr University Chapel@14500 Juanita Dr NE, Kenmore, WA 98028
  • Sunday, May 12, 2024, 3 PM
    Bellevue High School PAC, 10416 Wolverine Way, Bellevue, WA 98004

Highlights include:

  • Workshops/concerts with Reena Esmail, CANW’s 2024 Composer-in-Residence and rising star in the choral community
  • Saili Oak, Hindustani vocalist
  • Ravi Albright, tabla
  • Special Guests: Columbia Choirs Cantabile, Katrina Turman, director; Bothell High School Chamber Choir, Mikaela Rink, director; Bellevue High School Concert Choir, Andrew Jacobson, director; Newport High School Concert Choir, Nancy Fisher, director
  • Northwest premiere of Malhaar: A Requiem for Water

CANW presents the PNW premiere of Los Angeles-based composer, Reena Esmail’s Malhaar: A Requiem for Water. A rising star in the choral world, Reena Esmail joins CANW for a two-day residency, helping us craft Malhaar but also leading masterclasses on her music with choirs from Bellevue HS and Bothell HS choirs, and Cantabile from the Columbia Choirs.

For our concert, we share the stage with our high school and community partners, following their opening performances with Ms. Esmail’s stunning new work, Malhaar.

From the Composer (about Malhaar):
“In Hindustani music, Malhaar refers to a family of raags that beckon rain. As the legend goes, the greatest musicians could cause a downpour from even the most severely parched skies by the power of their song.

This is the inspiration for Malhaar: A Requiem for Water. As the drought worsened in Southern California, I yearned for a way to process the rising panic. The work intertwines texts from the traditional Latin Requiem mass alongside the work of Wendell Berry and William O’Daly, along with interspersed Hindi. It traces a trajectory of beauty and awe of water, the fear and devastation around its loss, an answered plea of atonement, and eventually a promise of a new cycle of life, as the water returns to the skies.

This is a hopeful requiem. While the collective loss has been so tremendous, we can still hold out hope that if we change our relationship to the earth, we might beckon the rain back.”

– Reena Esmail

Tickets $25 Advanced purchase/$35 At-the Door, student and other discounts available by advanced purchase

As a part of our commitment to equity, we offer multiple payment options to ensure that our audiences can choose the price type that best fits their financial situation. Requests for complimentary tickets may be made to info@choralartsnw.org

Saturday, May 11, 7:30 p.m. Sunday, May 12, 3 p.m.