Musica Viva NY Reveals 2024-25 Season Lineup

 New York City’s leading chamber choir, Musica Viva NY, has announced its 2024-25 season centered around the 10th anniversary of its intrepid Artistic Director-Conductor Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez. 

Celebrating a decade at the helm, Alejandro curates a season of works and composers that are personally meaningful to him while showcasing the diversity that has been a hallmark of Musica Viva NY for the past 10 years. Bach and Brahms, two of Alejandro’s favorite composers, are at the center of the season’s live performances, joined by Indian-American composer Reena Esmail, French composer Lili Boulanger and American composer Judith Shatin.

The season’s capstone is Musica Viva NY’s recording Crimson Roses: Contemporary American Choral Music (TBR 11.22.24, Naxos), the first under Hernandez-Valdez’s baton. Featuring acclaimed mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade (2024 OPERA America’s Opera Hall of Fame inductee), the album comprises three gorgeous chamber choral works by living American composers: Joseph Turrin, Gilda Lyons, and Richard Einhorn. (Please scroll down for complete season details.)

About Musica Viva NY

Musica Viva NY is a non-profit arts organization that was established nearly 50 years ago. Its mission is to bring world-class music to a wide community through an annual concert series, an active community engagement program, and an ambitious artistic vision. Under the baton of Artistic Director Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez since 2015, Musica Viva NY strives to offer joy, solace and renewal in a complex world by presenting new compositions and classic masterworks in transformative interpretations that ennoble the human spirit.

Musica Viva NY’s superb chamber choir and world class collaborating instrumentalists make their concert home in Manhattan’s historic All Souls Church. It regularly combines its presentation of the classical repertoire with less widely known works, as part of its commitment to perform the works of living American composers, women composers and composers of color, including works that address social, racial or environmental issues. Composers whose works have been featured in recent Musica Viva NY performances include Florence Price, Alexandra T Bryant, Steve Reich, Frank Ticheli, Missy Mazzoli, Alice Walker, Joel Thompson and Jesse Montgomery.

Musica Viva NY has commissioned and premiered numerous works by contemporary composers including Bora Yoon, Seymour Bernstein, Elena Ruehr, Joseph Turrin, Bruce Saylor, Jean-Louis Petit, Eugenio Toussaint, Gilda Lyons, Richard Einhorn, Trent Johnson and Trevor Weston.

Beyond high-quality concert performances, Musica Viva NY also serves the communities of New York City through a growing variety of rich community engagement programs. Currently, Musica Viva NY partners with New York city public schools, extracurricular youth ensembles, New York Public Library branches and the All Souls’ Monday Night Hospitality dinner program, offering free performances, artist clinics, interactive workshops, and more. Musica Viva NY has nurtured young artists throughout its half century of existence. Great musicians who have been Musica Viva NY singers and soloists include the Metropolitan Opera stars Samuel Ramey and Renée Fleming, and Broadway’s Aladdin, Michael Maliakel.

The organization was founded as an annual concert series in 1977 by Walter Klauss, who directed the group for 38 years, and adopted the name “Musica Viva” in 1985. Under Walter Klauss’ baton the choir toured in Paris (2004), Germany and Czechoslovakia (2006) and Italy (2012).