Voices Of Ascension Unveils 2025-2026 Season Featuring Brahms, Kodály, Duruflé and More

Voices of Ascension, the New York City-based professional chorus dedicated to sharing the transformative power of choral music through performances, commissions, and community engagement, has revealed its 2025-2026 season. Through a blend of contemporary and historical repertoire, Voices of Ascension fills its 36th season with music from the Renaissance to rarely-heard works by Brahms, Kodály, and Duruflé as they continue to celebrate the breadth of classical choral music while fostering the next generation of artists and music-lovers.

"This season reflects everything I love about choral music-its power to connect us across centuries, cultures, and emotions," shares Dennis Keene, Artistic Director and Conductor. "From the radiant complexity of Renaissance polyphony to rarely-heard masterworks by Brahms, Kodály, and Duruflé, we're offering a deep, wide-ranging musical journey. It's a profound privilege to bring this repertoire to life with Voices of Ascension and our extraordinary collaborators."

After two seasons of sold out holiday concerts, Voices of Ascension brings back its Candlelight Christmas Concerts on Tuesday, December 16, 2025 at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, December 18, 2025 at 7:30 p.m., with a new family-friendly performance added on Saturday, December 20, 2025 at 4:30 p.m. at Church of the Ascension. A treasured holiday tradition, these concerts feature a vibrant mix of ancient carols, seasonal masterworks, and contemporary reflections on winter and light-offering warmth, beauty, and community at year's end.

On Thursday, February 5, 2026 at 7:30 p.m. at Church of the Ascension, Voices presents rarely-heard works from three master composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Featured are Brahms's Nänie, a setting of Friedrich Schiller's meditation on mortality that glows with warm Romantic textures and dignified grace, and Kodály's Psalmus Hungaricus, composed in 1923 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Budapest's unification that merges Hungarian folk idioms with searing biblical lament. Both works are presented with brand new transcriptions by Voices's Founding Artistic Director and Conductor, Dennis Keene, especially made for The Manton Memorial Organ - the first French-built pipe organ ever installed in New York City located in the Church of the Ascension. Scored for orchestra and a chorus of 30 baritones in unison, Duruflé's masterpiece Messe 'cum jubilo' will receive its third performance ever with orchestra in New York City. The work intertwines Gregorian chant with the composer's signature harmonic refinement, and this performance carries special significance: Keene was a protégé of both Maurice and Marie-Madeleine Duruflé, and, with this lineage, stands among the world's foremost interpreters of Duruflé's music, offering a performance both historically rooted and emotionally profound.

In collaboration with Dark Horse Consort, Voices performs Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 on Thursday, March 5, 2026 at 7:30 p.m. at Church of the Ascension. With a fleet of soloists, double chorus, Early Music strings, recorders, cornetti, sackbuts, theorbos, harpsichord and organ, Dark Horse Consort and Voices of Ascension join forces in a thrilling intersection of scholarship and expressive brilliance for this pillar of Early Baroque music. Vespers of 1610 is rarely performed at such a large scale-featuring multiple choirs, a full roster of period instruments, and soloists-especially in a sacred acoustic like the Church of the Ascension.

Building on their acclaimed recordings, such as Beyond Chant: Mysteries of the Renaissance, Voices of Ascension continues to illuminate the depth and beauty of Renaissance choral music with Masters of the Renaissance: The Netherlands School on Thursday, April 23, 2026 at 7:30 p.m. at Church of the Ascension. With works spanning more than two centuries of history, starting with the Early Renaissance master, Josquin des Prez, and going all the way to the High Renaissance works of Orlande de Lassus, this concert reaffirms the ensemble's dedication to bringing historical masterpieces to contemporary audiences with authenticity and passion. Also featured are seldom heard, but exceptionally poetic and colorful motets of Dutch composer, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck.

For the final concert of the season on Thursday, May 21, 2026 at 7:30 p.m. at Church of the Ascension, Beth Willer-Founder and Artistic Director of Lorelei Ensemble and Director of Choral Studies at the Peabody Institute-leads Voices of Ascension in a blend of contemporary and historical repertoire.