Choral Featured Album: 'Now Ye Heavenly Powers'

The St. Olaf Christmas Festival has become one of the nation's most cherished holiday celebrations. Listen now as the Northfield-based college presents its 2022 program, “Promise of Peace,” from Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, with host Valerie Kahler, in this one-hour special.

The Minneapolis youth choir Known MPLS is making an impact in song and in community. ‘Known MPLS first and foremost exists to consistently provide a safe space for youth to thrive,’ director Courtland Pickens says. Find out more about these remarkable singers, and watch their performance of ‘Up Above My Head.’

Over three days in mid-November, the Voces8 Scholars, the U.S.-based training ensemble for the U.K.’s esteemed Voces8, recorded two Christmas songs prepared exclusively for YourClassical MPR listeners as part of our Carol Countdown. Watch now!

YourClassical Minnesota Public Radio’s Bring the Sing returned to the Fargo-Moorhead area on Aug. 15, led by Fargo-Moorhead Choral Artists and director Michael Culloton. Check out a video of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and photos from this wonderful community sing-along!

‘Christmas With Cantus’ is a beloved holiday tradition for YourClassical MPR listeners featuring the eight voices of the male vocal ensemble live in concert.

'All Is Bright', with host Lynne Warfel, offers an hour of gorgeous, contemplative choral music that tells the traditional Christmas story with songs about angels, the star and the manger scene. Featured artists include Cantus, Chanticleer, Cambridge Singers, Bryn Terfel, Emma Kirkby, Jessye Norman, and a variety of choirs.

The choral world was upended along with the rest of the world during COVID and everyone went virtual, using the Eric Whitacre model that was established before the pandemic. So we asked him back then to pick his favorite virtual performances.

I feel like I'm entering a war zone writing about this topic: being a soprano in a choir. There are so many preconceived notions about sopranos. Let's get those stereotypes out of the way now.

In lots of choral pieces, many people would have a hard time picking out the alto line. Yet if the altos were missing, the piece would feel wrong and empty. A singer with VocalEssence offers praise for that inner line.

Sociologists speak of class envy, students of grade envy and Freudians of penis envy. But in the choral world (and what is the choral world, after all, but a trembling microcosm of the very world itself?), it's tenor envy that seethes just beneath the surface.