Season 2024-2025
Celebrating Our 60th Anniversary
Join us as we celebrate Ars Choralis’s 60th anniversary and our contribution to the musical life of Woodstock and Ulster County. To highlight this achievement, we’ve planned an ambitious season that includes four programs throughout the year and includes two or three additional small events looking back on our history and culminating in a “Festival” Month in June.
Time Was
December 14 & 15, 2024
Kingston/Woodstock
On December 14 & 15, 2024, the season starts off with Time Was, a story concert that captures the spirit of the holiday season through multicultural music and traditions that bring people together during December celebrations. Like It’s a Wonderful Life (Ars Choralis’s musical version of the familiar film,) the story is based on real world and community events from the 1940’s to present day and is told through music and spoken word.
Together We Rise
December 31, 2024
Old Dutch Church
272 Wall Street
Kingston, NY
As has been a recent tradition, we will present a New Year’s Eve Concert Together We Rise in partnership with the City of Kingston and Old Dutch Church. This concert of love and light is designed to uplift the spirit with words and music recognizing the beauty and wonder of our common humanity. It is inspired by the April 8, 2024 eclipse and a song by Ana Egge, with the words, “In that moment, looking up, we were one.” Coming after a major election, we offer a concert of love that lifts our spirits toward the light.
Fiat Lux
March 22 & 23, 2025
Kingston/Woodstock
Our March 2025 concert, Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light) features Fiat Lux by John Beeman. The composer uses the Latin creation text from Genesis and later juxtaposes it against English texts about the struggles to end repression. It ends hopefully with “A new day is dawning, the darkness has broken.” Also featured in this concert is Joel Thompson’s The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed. While the concert deals with difficult subjects, the overall musical experience is one of hope, healing and love.
Festival Month of June 2025 – 60th Anniversary Celebration
Fauré Requiem
June 21 & 22, 2025
Maverick Concert Hall
120 Maverick Road
Woodstock, NY
We will end our season with a month-long festival in June 2025 celebrating Ars Choralis’s 60th anniversary. To open the festival, we’re considering a Madrigal Concert as we were once known as the Mid-Hudson Madrigal Society and/or a recreation of the first Ars Choralis Concert (June 12, 1966) of Renaissance and Baroque music. The festival will close with two performances with orchestra of the Fauré Requiem at Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock on June 21 and 22, 2025.
In addition, we are planning to add a free concert designed for children and their families (honoring our past tradition of going into local schools to perform) and a concert of Ars Choralis’s favorites selected by audience members and singers.