Beethoven’s Ninth

Baltimore Choral Arts Society

Baltimore Choral Arts Society builds a stronger, more connected, more inspired community by celebrating the joy of choral music through exceptional performances and diverse educational and artistic partnerships.

Baltimore Choral Arts Society, now in its 58th season, is one of Maryland’s premier cultural institutions. The Symphonic Chorus, Chorus, and Chamber Singers perform throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, as well as in Washington, D.C., New York, and in Europe. Music Director Anthony Blake Clark has established new, large-scale collaborative performances with Maryland Institute College of Art, Maryland State Boychoir, and Peabody Youth Orchestra. In October 2022, Choral Arts went on its second European tour under the direction of Maestro Clark, with performances in Vienna, Berlin, and Prague, and concluded with a prestigious invitation to perform with the Vienna Radio Orchestra under the baton of Marin Alsop.

Baltimore Choral Arts provides several thoughtful and impactful music education programs that serve youth in and around Baltimore. These programs include CoroLAB, a partnership with Overlea High School and Baltimore City College’s choral music programs; Vocal Fellows, an expanded professional development program for early-career singers; Student Composer Project, a competition for high-school and college composers; and Christmas for Kids. Through these educational programs, Choral Arts serves the very young to early-career adult musicians.

For the previous 25 years, WMAR Television, the ABC network affiliate in Maryland, featured Choral Arts in an hour-long special, Christmas with Choral Arts, which won an Emmy Award in 2006. In 2022, Christmas with Choral Arts was broadcast on Maryland Public Television, bringing the performance to new audiences. In 2022, Choral Arts collaborated with composer Jasmine Barnes to present Mozart’s Requiem Reframed, which was recorded by Maryland Public Television for the Emmy® Award-winning episode, Artworks: Dreamer. The ensemble has been featured frequently on The First Art (Public Radio International), Performance Today (National Public Radio) and VOX (XM Radio). In Europe, Choral Arts was featured in a program devoted to the music of Handel broadcast on Radio Suisse Romande.

In 2010, under the direction of then-Music Director Tom Hall, Choral Arts released Christmas at America’s First Cathedral on Gothic Records, recorded at the Baltimore Basilica, which includes familiar Christmas favorites as well as premieres by Rosephanye Dunn Powell and James Lee, III. A recording with Dave Brubeck, featuring Brubeck’s oratorio, The Gates of Justice, was released internationally on the NAXOS label in 2004; Choral Arts is also featured on Introducing the World of American Jewish Music on Naxos. Choral Arts has two other recordings in current release: Christmas with Choral Arts and a live recording of the Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil and will soon celebrate the release of their newest album, Dreamer, on Acis Records, featuring Maestro Clark’s new edition of Mozart’s Requiem and Portraits: Douglass and Tubman by Jasmine Barnes. Recent awards and recognitions include the 2020 Chorus America/ASCAP Alice Parker Award, the 2020 American Prize in Community Chorus Conducting (Anthony Blake Clark), and the 2020 Emmy Award nomination for the 2019 Christmas with Choral Arts broadcast.