Back to the 2026–27 season

Washington Master Chorale · 2026–27 Season

All Is Calm, All Is Bright

Nothing but voices, and two rooms built to hold them.

All Is Calm, All Is Bright concert artwork with a snow-covered grove, concert title, and the Washington Master Chorale logo

Performance and ticket information

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$45

Watch a recording of the concert at home. The recording will be available approximately two days after the final performance and will remain available for one week.

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This program includes an intermission.

Nothing but voice — the oldest sound there is: voices in a room built to hold them, and the room giving everything back.

Our Christmas program this year is entirely unaccompanied, and it begins a very long way back: Puer Natus, anonymous, sung for centuries by people whose names are gone. From there it moves forward in time without ever losing the thread. Oliver Tarney and Kerensa Briggs. Christopher Hoh’s See, I Am Sending My Messenger. Mason Bynes’s Epiphanytide beside Holst’s Nunc Dimittis, two visions of a new year written a century apart.

At the center is Ešenvalds’s Stars, where singers draw tone from tuned glasses and Tibetan singing bowls while the harmony above them holds almost perfectly still. It is as close as music gets to standing outside on a cold, clear night and looking up.

After intermission the program turns warm and familiar. Es ist ein Ros’ in Praetorius’s harmonization. Les Anges dans nos Campagnes. God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen and Deck the Halls as Robert Shaw and Alice Parker arranged them. William Dawson’s radiant Behold the Star, with soprano and tenor soloists. Then Silent Night, the way the evening has to end.

Come in from the dark. Bring the people you’d most want sitting beside you.

Program Highlights

  • AnonymousPuer Natus
  • Christopher HohSee, I Am Sending My Messenger
  • Ēriks EšenvaldsStars
  • Mason BynesEpiphanytide
  • Gustav HolstNunc Dimittis
  • William DawsonBehold the Star
  • Franz GruberSilent Night