Join us for the finest holiday choral concert in the Bay Area! The Cantare Chorale and Chamber Ensemble come together to offer you a gift basket of memorable music that will fill you with the joy, warmth and hope that define the spirit of these holidays. Included are Bach’s festive Cantata #50, Rutter’s Gloria, a grand medley of Seasonal Sounds by Randol Bass, plus selections by Bruckner, Ysaye Barnwell, Moses Hogan and others. Our award-winning All Star Singers will also be on hand, putting their uplifting spin on the season. And you, the audience, will join the choirs, full orchestra and organ in singing carols and other seasonal songs.

Christmas with the Chamber Ensemble will be a concert like no other, merging a beautiful array of holiday music delivered by Cantare’s finest. With festive sacred and secular holiday pieces and the sweet sounds of familiar carols, this program will move you deeply and most likely leave you talking about it long after the last note has sounded. We also will provide a light supper of scrumptious treats in a table setting, the perfect accompaniment to such lovely holiday music.

The Chamber Ensemble joins with the UC Berkeley Gospel Chorus in a musical celebration of African American spirituals and gospel songs. The spirituals, dating from the early 1800s, speak of deep hope and promise rooted in the life and faith experiences of slaves on American soil. This poignant and powerful sacred music genre gave birth to the blues and jazz as well as gospel music itself. The lively and passion-filled sounds of these gospel selections will undoubtedly lift your spirit and quite possibly find you dancing in the aisles.

The Chorale celebrates the 200th anniversary of Felix Mendelssohn’s birth by presenting his towering masterwork. The dramatic story of the deep faith and personal vulnerabilities of Israel’s prophet Elijah comes to life through this beloved Oratorio’s twenty powerful choruses and its memorable solos. Mendelssohn has been called “a painter in music.” Through his musical brushstrokes we find ourselves placed throughout the story, called to wrestle with our own feelings of fear and courage, despair and hope, making Elijah relevant for us in our time.

The night after all is half the day, yet it is filled with emotional complexities best captured in poetry, art and music. Night is a time for love and the time when we are most frightened. It is when the stars and moon bathe our world in glimmering beauty, and when our bodies rest while our dream world comes to life through vivid imagination. We bring you songs by Brahms, Elgar, Delius, and Barber as well as those by Cole Porter, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Billy Joel, including that great 50s hit recorded by the Five Satins, In the Still of the Night.

Rodgers & Hammerstein, Lerner & Lowe, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim are among the giants of the American musical theater. The Chorale, Chamber Ensemble and Treble Honor Choir will take you on a journey down Broadway with timeless songs from Oklahoma, South Pacific, My Fair Lady, The King and I, Carousel, The Sound of Music, West Side Story, Oliver, The Wiz, Les Mis, Phantom of the Opera, Hairspray, Rent, Jersey Boys and others, and will have you singing along while smiling on the inside. Now that’s entertainment!