Santa Fe Desert Chorale announces 44th season with premieres and Rachmaninoff revival

The ensemble’s annual Summer Festival (12 July – 2 August) will include three world premieres by composers Shawn Kirchner, Moira Smiley and Shavon Lloyd, presented in a programme celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the US Declaration of Independence. The festival will also see the return of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil (Vespers), performed by an expanded 32-voice a cappella choir in concerts in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Another programme, Renaissance Splendor, will feature the early music ensemble Incantare in a selection of Spanish and Italian Renaissance and Baroque repertoire. The season opens on 25 April with a community “Big Sing” workshop led by Smiley, and concludes with the choir’s Winter Festival holiday programmes in December. Alongside the concert season, the ensemble will release a new commercial recording, Roots & Rivers, in June featuring music by several contemporary American composers. Founded in 1982 and directed by Joshua Habermann since 2008, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale is a professional chamber choir of 24 singers and presents an annual summer festival that attracts audiences from across the United States and beyond.