Washington Master Chorale · 2026–27 Season
Pathways of Light
The songs of ordinary people, raised into art.
Church of the Epiphany · 1317 G Street NW, Washington, DC 20005
About the Concert
Before it belonged to composers, this music belonged to anyone who could carry a tune.
Antonín Dvořák spent a career proving that was enough. His Four Choruses, Op. 29 take the folk melodies of his own country and treat them with the seriousness reserved for sacred text. Béla Bartók went walking into the Hungarian countryside with a notebook and came back with treasure. Washington Master Chorale’s own Kabanya Vinson premieres an arrangement of All Creatures of Our God and King.
Then the room itself changes. In Ēriks Ešenvalds’s Northern Lights, the singers set water-tuned glasses ringing and power chimes shimmering beneath an old Latvian text about a boy watching the sky. The sound doesn’t seem to arrive from the front of the church so much as gather overhead.
And the afternoon closes with R. Nathaniel Dett, who named Dvořák’s example as the one that showed him what was possible with the music he had grown up singing. The Chariot Jubilee opens wide for chorus, organ, and tenor soloist, and his settings of Weepin’ Mary, Baptism, and Hew Round the Tree stand alongside it.
Five composers. Two continents. One shared conviction that the songs people sing to one another are worth everything art can bring to them. Come hear where they lead.
Program Highlights
- Antonín DvořákFour Choruses, Op. 29
- Ēriks EšenvaldsNorthern Lights
- Béla BartókFour Slavic Folk Carols
- Kabanya VinsonAll Creatures of Our God and King — premiere arrangement
- R. Nathaniel DettThe Chariot Jubilee and spiritual settings
Featured Artists
Edward Washington II · tenor
Evelyn Simpson Curenton · organ
Andrew Rosenblum · principal accompanist