The Dessoff Choirs Unveils 2025-2026 Season Featuring Bach and More

The Dessoff Choirs - led by Music Director Malcolm J. Merriweather - has revealed its 2025-2026 season. Fresh off its 100th anniversary season in 2024-2025, The Dessoff Choirs has been a fixture on the New York classical music scene, known for introducing unknown, long-forgotten, or newly composed works to American audiences, while Dessoff's nine music directors have continued expanding founder Margarete Dessoff's legacy. Malcolm J. Merriweather, Dessoff's current music director, has used this podium to reintroduce the works of Margaret Bonds, Florence Price, and Valerie Capers, along with commissioning new works. Dessoff's next season includes performances of Howells's Requiem and Adolphus Hailstork's The World Called, the return of Dessoff's popular annual concerts Welcome Yule and Messiah Sing, and a presentation of Bach's B Minor Mass, complete with full orchestra and soloists.

The 2025-26 season also marks Merriweather's tenth year leading The Dessoff Choirs. Music Director Malcolm J. Merriweather shares, "Two anniversaries in a row! Following Dessoff's incredible 100th anniversary season, I am thrilled to be celebrating my tenth year with The Dessoff Choirs."

Kicking off Dessoff's 2025-2026 season is a performance of Herbert Howells's Requiem on Saturday, November 8, 2025 at 4:00 p.m. at Brick Church. This work for unaccompanied choir will be paired with Adolphus Hailstork's The World Called. Known for blending African, American, and European traditions, and influenced by his studies with Nadia Boulanger, Hailstork's work is based on Rita Dove's poem, Testimonial, that evokes themes of nostalgia, youth, and promise.

Dessoff then offers its annual holiday concerts: Welcome Yule on Saturday, December 6, 2025 at 7:00 p.m., celebrating the 500th anniversary of Palestrina's birth, followed by Messiah Sing, which provides audience members the opportunity to join the choir for Handel's vibrant choruses, with Dessoff members performing the arias on Wednesday, December 10, 2025 at 7:00 p.m. Both concerts take place at James Chapel, Union Theological Seminary.

For its last concert of the season, Dessoff presents Bach's B Minor Mass, complete with a full orchestra and soloists, on Saturday, April 18, 2026 at 4:00 p.m. at Mother AME Zion Church in Harlem. Considered a cornerstone of Western music, it is the perfect prism through which to view Bach's compositional genius. No one knows why this Lutheran composer ever chose to compose a Catholic mass in the first place, and why, once composed, it was never performed in its entirety (and its final form) until several decades after Bach's death. Perhaps the most convincing reason is that Bach compiled the B Minor Mass to stand as a catalog of all the musical styles known at that time, from the earliest Gregorian chants to the newly fashionable style "galant". In creating a work that has come to be regarded as the apex of human artistic expression, Bach also left a musical catalog for future generations.

Program Information

Herbert Howells' Requiem

Saturday, November 8, 2025 at 4:00 p.m.
Brick Church | 1140 Park Avenue | New York, NY 10128
Tickets: $25-45
Link: https://www.dessoff.org/events/howells-and-hailstork

HERBERT HOWELLS: Requiem
ADOLPHUS HAILSTORK: The World Called

The Dessoff Choirs & Orchestra
Malcolm J. Merriweather, conductor
Raymond Nagem, organ
_________________________________

Welcome Yule: Celebrating Palestrina

Saturday, December 6, 2025 at 7:00 p.m.
James Chapel, Union Theological Seminary | 3041 Broadway | New York, NY 10027
Link: https://www.dessoff.org/events/welcome-yule-2025

Program to be announced.
_________________________________

Messiah Sing

Wednesday, December 10, 2025 at 7:00 p.m.
James Chapel, Union Theological Seminary | 3041 Broadway | New York, NY 10027
Link: https://www.dessoff.org/events/messiah-sing-2025

GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL: Messiah

The Dessoff Choirs
Malcolm J. Merriweather, conductor
_________________________________

Bach: B Minor Mass

Saturday, April 18, 2026 4:00 at p.m.
Mother AME Zion Church | 140 W 137th St | New York, NY 10030
Link: https://www.dessoff.org/events/b-minor-mass

Johann Sebastian Bach: B Minor Mass