Vanessa Williams Will Lead ANYONE CAN WHISTLE as a Part of MasterVoices Season at Carnegie Hall

Ted Sperling, Artistic Director of MasterVoices, announced details of the celebrated chorus' 80th season, celebrating the power of the human voice to unite, inspire and connect since 1941.

The 2021-22 season opens on December 6 at Carnegie Hall with A Joyful Noise, a return to performing before an audience after a two-year absence, featuring music to mark the holiday season as well as the perseverance of the human spirit after a long hiatus. Works include Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, Thomas A. Dorsey's If We Ever Needed the Lord Before (We Sure Do Need Him Now), traditional songs, and music by Adam Guettel, John Rutter and Randall Thompson. Joining MasterVoices are soprano Mikaela Bennett, the Northwell Health Nurse Choir and Take 6. MasterVoices will provide free tickets to a few hundred essential and frontline workers to this concert to thank them for their personal sacrifices during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The second concert of the anniversary season is on March 10 at Carnegie Hall: a semi-staged concert production of the cult-favorite musical, Stephen Sondheim's and Arthur Laurents' Anyone Can Whistle, starring Vanessa Williams. Written in 1964, the ahead-of-its-time satire shows early signs of Sondheim's rebel genius as it skewers many targets, revealing what can happen when a community puts its faith in an unreliable leader. It has not been seen in New York since 2010, when it was presented by the Encores! series at City Center.

The season ends in June with an outdoor concert, Songs for a Summer Night. All of the pieces chosen for this program evoke the sounds, smells and emotions of summer, in their own fashion. It will feature several new arrangements conceived for the program. The concert includes the world premiere of a newly commissioned piece by Tariq Al-Sabir, inspired by the sounds of a New York City summer, as well as music by Barber, Berlioz, Gordon, Mendelssohn, Schwartz and Sondheim, among others. Joining MasterVoices are guests Shereen Pimentel, Tariq Al-Sabir, and the Orchestra of St. Luke's. Complete details of the outdoor performance will be announced at a later date.

Said Mr. Sperling, "We are delighted to return for our 80th season to our historic home, Carnegie Hall, where MasterVoices, then The Collegiate Chorale, first began. More than ever, we yearn to experience the powerful emotions felt by the singers and listeners alike when more than 100 voices sing in a great acoustic setting. Meanwhile, we have used our time offstage for dreaming and planning. We updated our logo and mission statement to reflect the evolution of our identity as an engaged community chorus, prepared for a professional recording of our acclaimed 2019 City Center performance of Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin's Lady in the Dark starring Victoria Clark, and will soon release a new short video - directed by Sammi Cannold with script by Rick Elice - to launch on the occasion of our 80th anniversary later this year."

The central project of MasterVoices' 2020-2021 season was the virtual rollout of award-winning composer Adam Guettel's 1998 theatrical song cycle, Myths and Hymns, in an online staging conceived by Ted Sperling. The concert will be reprised this fall in a full-length broadcast version distributed by ALL ARTS, which will premiere nationwide on November 10 at 8 p.m. ET on the free ALL ARTS app and allarts.org, and in the New York metro area on the ALL ARTS TV channel. The ALL ARTS special will include an introduction by Ted Sperling. To watch, get the ALL ARTS app or visit: https://allarts.org/everywhere/.