Back to the 2026–27 season

Washington Master Chorale · 2026–27 Season

Pathways of Light

The songs of ordinary people, raised into art.

Pathways of Light concert artwork featuring a sunlit hillside path, the Washington Master Chorale logo, and concert title

Performance and ticket information

Watch Online

$45

Watch a recording of the concert at home. A viewing link will be emailed approximately two days after the performance and will be available for one week.

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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 notebooks and came back with treasure.

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 found in Dvořák’s example the permission to bring that same devotion to the American spiritual. The Chariot Jubilee is where that tradition arrives.

Four composers. Two continents. One shared conviction that the songs people sing to one another are worth everything art can bring to them.

The program also looks forward with two new American works: Andrew Vu’s A Golden Day and Kabanya Vinson’s All Creatures of Our God and King, receiving its world premiere.

Come hear where they lead.

Program Highlights

  • Antonín DvořákFour Choruses, Op. 29
  • Béla BartókFour Slavic Folk Songs Sz. 70
  • Ēriks EšenvaldsAncient Prairie & Northern Lights
  • R. Nathaniel DettThe Chariot Jubilee, and spiritual settings
  • Andrew VuA Golden Day
  • Kabanya VinsonAll Creatures of Our God and King (World Premiere)
Evelyn Simpson Curenton organ
Andrew Rosenblum principal accompanist