Trinity Choir Performs at Carnegie and Met Museum, Plus Annual “Messiah”

One of the most beloved traditions at Trinity Church Wall Street is its annual series of performances of Handel's Messiah. This winter, on December 13-17, the Grammy-nominated Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, and Director of Music Julian Wachner give four accounts of the oratorio in the historically informed, period-instrument rendition that the New York Times considers "perhaps the essential New York 'Messiah.'" The Sunday, December 16, performance will be streamed live and made available on demand, free of charge. This weekend on December 1, Wachner and the choir reprise Julia Wolfe's Pulitzer Prize-winning Anthracite Fields at Carnegie Hall. They are joined for the oratorio, which commemorates the history of coal mining in northeastern Pennsylvania around the turn of the 20th century, by Bang on a Can All-Stars, their partners on the 2015 world premiere recording of the work. And in the midst of the Messiah performances, on December 15, the choir performs another Pulitzer Prize-winning composition, David Lang's Little Match Girl Passion, at New York's Metropolitan Museum. Handel's Dixit Dominus is also on the program, as the choir is joined by the Trinity Baroque Orchestra.

Almost 250 years ago, Trinity Church Wall Street was instrumental in pioneering Handel's Messiah in the Americas, hosting one of the first American performances in 1770. Today, Wachner and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and Trinity Baroque Orchestra rank among the foremost exponents of the perennial holiday favorite. Early music experts who play on period instruments and specialize in Baroque performance practice, they offer an authentic approach that, as the Wall Street Journal put it, "demonstrate[s] why historically informed performance makes a difference." In 2017, the New York Times described Trinity's rendition as "perhaps the essential New York 'Messiah.' With the church's choir and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra...Mr. Wachner provides gritty, gutsy, edge-of-the-seat performances." Due to the current rejuvenation project at Trinity Church, this year's performances will take place at St. Paul's Chapel at Broadway and Fulton Street, with floor and balcony seating. Some seats are limited view or monitor-only view, with ticket prices adjusted accordingly. Tickets are available here.

Wachner and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street have a long history of collaboration with both Julia Wolfe and David Lang. Following their world premiere recording of Wolfe's Anthracite Fields with Bang on a Can All-Stars in 2015, the same forces reunited for a multimedia rendition of the work last spring at the Kennedy Center as part of the DIRECT CURRENT festival, as well as a performance this past summer at Mass MoCA in Massachusetts. As a prelude to the December 1 performance at Carnegie Hall, they performed the piece earlier this month at the Lackawanna Historical Society in Scranton, PA, formerly a center of the anthracite coal industry. Tickets for the Carnegie performance are available here.

David Lang has seen the choir perform many of his compositions over a number of seasons, including the 2016 New York premiere of his piece The National Anthems, a Trinity co-commission; the U.S. premiere of his Psalm 101 as part of the "150 Psalms" project at Lincoln Center's White Light Festival last season; and a previous performance of his Little Match Girl Passion at the Metropolitan Museum in 2015. Tickets for this season's holiday performance at the museum (Dec 15) are available here.

Trinity's music program also offers a number of other notable extra-liturgical performances this winter. As the second in the new series of free monthly evening performances on the theme "Now comes the setting sun," earlier this month Wachner and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street performed Rachmaninoff's hauntingly beautiful Vespers.

This week, Wachner and the choir are at REDCAT in Los Angeles to give the world premiere of Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins's new opera p r i s m, co-commissioned by Trinity Church Wall Street and Beth Morrison Projects. They will give the East Coast premiere of the work in New York in January at La MaMa during the Prototype Festival, for which tickets may be purchased here.

Trinity's semi-professional chorus, Downtown Voices, conducted by Stephen Sands, gives a concert in St. Paul's Chapel tonight (Nov 30) called "Voices over Tallinn: Honoring 100 Years of the Estonian Nation." The concert celebrates the 100th anniversary of Estonia's independence, paying homage to some of the country's most influential composers, including Veljo Tormis and Arvo Pärt. Downtown Voices also joins The Trinity Youth Chorus, The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, and brass and percussion from NOVUS NY in the Christmas season for two "Community Carol Sing" performances, December 22 and 23, led by conductors Stephen Sands and Julian Wachner, featuring arrangements by Wachner of "The Snow Lay on the Ground" and holiday favorites. Tickets can be purchased here.

Photo: White Lights Festival in St. Paul's Chapel (photo: Leah Reddy)