William Baker Festival Singers
2023-2024 26th Concert Season

AUDITIONS FOR THE 2024-2025 SEASON AVAILABLE BY APPOINTMENT

* PURCHASE CONCERT TICKETS *

The Festival Singers is Chorus in Residence
at the Historic St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Missouri
www.StMarysKCMO.org

“It’s hard to know where to begin praising this chorus’ performance…What came across Thursday night above all was the great warmth in this chorus’ singing. It was almost like hearing a family.” - The Kansas City Star

"The William Baker Festival Singers performed an English version of the German Requiem with a brilliance and sensitivity that spoke to all, both present and past."- KC Metropolis

2021 Ernst Bacon Award for Service to American Music and

Second-Place National Winner of the 2021 American Prize in Choral Performance

William O. Baker, DMA, Music Director & Conductor
Christine Freeman, MME, Associate Music Director & Senior Vocal Coach
Jamea Sale, PhD, Executive Associate Director
Kelsey Emmanuel, MM, Choral Intern
Ed Frazier Davis, MM, Director, Institute for Choral Creativity
Sean Sweeden, DMA, Composer in Residence

The William Baker Festival Singers is a 50-voice semi-professional chorale specializing in sacred short form classical works and spirituals, along with masterworks for chorus and orchestra performed annually with members of the Kansas City Symphony. Tracing its history to the original Festival Singers created by William Baker in Atlanta in 1985, the present ensemble in Kansas City was founded in October 1998 and is now in its 26th concert season.

The Festival Singers has toured across the South, Midwest and Northeast, including performances in New York City, Chicago, Washington, DC, Princeton, Des Moines, Omaha, Austin, San Antonio, New Orleans, Arkansas, Milwaukee and Atlanta. The Festival Singers has produced over 25 nationally released recordings, and have appeared on national radio programs including The Sounds of Majesty, The First Art and National Public Radio’s Performance Today. The choir has been featured in hour-long holiday specials on Radio Bach and the Kansas City CBS Television affiliate KCTV-5, in addition to numerous broadcasts on Kansas Public Radio.

Recent masterworks performances have included, Mozart: Great Mass in C minor, Bach: St. Matthew Passion and Mass in B minor, and Ernest Bloch: Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service) which, at the time, were the first performances of the works by Kansas City artists in decades. Other recent performances have included the Requiems of John Rutter, Gabriel Fauré, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Johannes: Brahms, the Midwest premier of William Dreyfoos’: Songs of the Holocaust, Zoltan Kodaly’s: Laudes Organi, Bethoven: Symphony No. 9, Mozart’s Coronation Mass, and Regina Coeli, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, and many others.

2013 Durufle: Introit et Kyrie from “Requiem” in Helzberg Hall - YouTube
2014 Brahms: Movement II from “A German Requiem” - YouTube
2015 Elder: Ballade to the Moon - YouTube
2018 Mozart: KYRIE from Great Mass in C minor -YouTube
2019 Esenvalds: O Salutaris Hostia - YouTube
2019 Schulz-Widmar: Good Friday Anthems - YouTube
2020 Ed Frazier Davis O Magnum Mysterium - YouTube
2020 Ed Frazier Davis: Swing Down, Chariot - YouTube
2022 Esenvalds: Northern Lights - YouTube
2022 Byron Smith: He'll Make a Way - YouTube
2022 William Henry Smith: Ride the Chariot - YouTube
2022 Candlelight, Carols & Cathedral - Youtube
2022 Joseph Jennings: Steal Away - YouTube
2023 Johannes Brahms: Ein Deutches Requiem - YouTube

Membership in the William Baker Festival Singers is by competitive audition. Auditions are heard in August and January of each year, or as vacancies in the chorus occur.