GRAMMY® Award-winning Houston Chamber Choir announces ‘A Heart for the Choral Art,’ 2022-2023 concert season

Choral concert fans rejoice, as the Houston Chamber Choir has recently announced their 2022-2023 concert season. Titled, “A Heart for the Choral Art,” this season promises to showcase the choir’s passion for what they do, with different genres of music to be performed at every concert.

This will be the Choir’s 28th season, with a total of eight concerts making up the season from September of this year to May 2023. Music will be performed from a variety of genres including Classical, Folk, and Indie Folk that fans of the genres can look forward to.

After a tumultuous past three years of performing under health restrictions regarding COVID-19, this season marks the first since the beginning of the pandemic that will begin and hopefully end completely restriction-free. For Artistic Director and Founder Robert Simpson, this means a chance for the choir to completely devote themselves to the music they love.

“It feels very exciting to bring in the new season,” Simpson said. “And our title, ‘A Heart for the Choral Art,’ expresses my joy in the fact that for the first time in several seasons, we’re going to be able to completely turn ourselves over to the music we love to sing without worrying about medical protocols and restrictions that have prevented us from feeling natural on stage.”

The season will kick off in September with a festival tribute concert titled “Let All the World in Every Corner Sing,” in honor of English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams’ 150th birthday. The highlight of the concert will be the performance of Vaughan Williams’ own “Mass in G minor’’ as well as works created by his mentors Charles Villiers Stanford and Maurice Ravel.

“Much English music has been inspired by European models from Germany,” Simpson explained. “Vaughn Williams was the person who went back to folk music of England and found music that was inspired by the English spirit. He’s a very important composer to the development of England’s music, but he is also a major composer, so we’re going to have a wonderful time celebrating his music.”

Their next concert, called “This Land is your Land,” will include folk songs as well as spirituals and 1960s protest songs reminiscent of the Depression era and America’s history of protesting and freedom fighting. According to Simpson, this concert is meant to evoke the history of the American Revolution in particular. This concert is also free and open to the public.

Another concert of note in the upcoming season is the “Ancestors Dreams” concert taking place next March. This concert is significant, as it will be conducted by internationally renowned conductor and clinician Dr. Anthony Trecek-King.

Dr. Trecek-King is a Black composer and resident conductor of the Handel and Haydn Society, America’s oldest choral organization. He’ll be bringing to the concert music from overlooked Black composers, in an effort to showcase their work in a genre of music in which they are severely underrepresented.

Simpson has very high hopes for the season to come. Despite the previous season being somewhat hampered due to pandemic restrictions, the feedback he received was so positive that he can’t help but bring in the new one with beaming optimism.

“I’m very happy with the music we were able to perform last season,” recalled Simpson. “It was our return to live performance, and even though we had to take those precautions, we still really enjoyed singing live again, and our audience responded so beautifully to us that we felt appreciated and missed.”

Simpson hopes to carry the momentum from the last season into the new one. He tells those who will attend to expect different forms of music at every concert.

Season subscriptions range from $50 for students up to $201 for the six-concert option. For more information about ticketing and subscriptions for the new concert season, visit the Houston Chamber Choir’s website at houstonchamberchoir.org.