**Community Songfest Berkeley**

Join us for a delightful family concert featuring the youngest singers of the San Francisco Boys Chorus at the Community Songfest Berkeley. This special event will take place on May 19 at 2:00 pm at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, located at 2727 College Ave, Berkeley, California, 94705.

**Event Details:**
- **Date:** May 19
- **Time:** 2:00 pm
- **Location:** St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave, Berkeley, California, 94705, United States
- **Tickets and Info:** $10 per ticket. Attend free with a child by entering the code "sing" at checkout.

**Additional Information:**
- **Venue Website:** [St. John’s Presbyterian Church](#)
- **Add to Calendar:** Options available for Google Calendar, iCalendar, Outlook 365, and Outlook Live.

Come and enjoy an afternoon of beautiful music and support the talented young singers of the San Francisco Boys Chorus.

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Community Songfest Berkeley

St. John’s Presbyterian Church

From the Depths to the Ecstatic:  How does the past inform the present and point the way to the future? Volti continues its 45th season of “singing without a net” with a concert of beautiful and groundbreaking music exploring historic concepts of spiritual diversity, largely from the writings of female medieval mystics, as expressed by contemporary composers.

Program 2 - From the Depths to the Ecstatic

Crowden Music Center

Noe Valley Ministry

Rediscover the magic of the holidays infused with a heartfelt twist this December at our annual “Holiday Spectacular!” This isn't your average evening of yuletide carols. Here, each note sung is a whispered promise, a warm embrace in musical form.

Holiday Spectacular

University of California, Berkeley

Sydney Goldstein Theater

The Castro Theatre

Sonoma State University

Part concert, part comedy revue, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus’ Holiday Spectacular is the place to be each December. More than 100 voices strong and dressed in fabulously festive attire, the chorus performs beloved holiday songs and acts out timely, funny sketches in an event that has become a much-anticipated season highlight. Now celebrating its 45th year, the SFGMC sparked a nationwide LGBTQ+ choral movement after its first public performance at a vigil on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall following the assassinations of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. Since then, the chorus has become a cherished part of the fabric of not only San Francisco, but also the entire Bay Area. Expect favorites like “Jingle Bells” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” classical choral works, and surprises galore! “An organization that, like [the gay] community, is as diverse, proud and creative as the rainbow” (Broadway World).

San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus

Be inspired, transported and uplifted in this, a journey through no less than 600 years of music celebrating Christmas. From Pachelbel’s beloved Canon, heard afresh on our period instruments, through to the rich, melting harmonies of Tchaikovsky and John Taverner’s spare, haunting, The Lamb, plus a brand new piece by Roderick Williams, written especially for the occasion. Music that will resonate with you for long after the concert, and a perfect start to the Holiday season.

Six Centuries Of Christmas

First Congregational Church

First Congregational Church of Berkeley

War Memorial and Performing Arts Center

Stanford University

Following their widely acclaimed collaboration on Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro, Peter Sellars, Grant Gershon, and singers of the Los Angeles Master Chorale reunite in a deeply personal meditation on what it means to say goodbye during times of struggle. The luminous music of Baroque composer Heinrich Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien (Music to Accompany a Departure) serves as inspiration for a fully staged ceremony of remembrance and devotion, performed by 24 singers accompanied by organ and viol da gamba. Schütz composed this profound exploration of mortality and grief in the 1630s, during the ravages of the 30 Years’ War, and it was dedicated to the memory of one of his dearest friends. The premiere performances of this production made the Los Angeles Times’ “Best of 2022” list, which the artists’ work as “transcendent” and “incomparably moving”: “art that makes you sad yet grateful for every minute of life.”

Los Angeles Master Chorale

Celebrating their 50th anniversary this season, the peerless Tallis Scholars are at the very height of their powers, winning both the Recording of the Year and the Choral Award in BBC Music Magazine last year, and taking home the 2021 Gramophone Music Award in Early Music. These Berkeley favorites are master performers of sacred Renaissance choral music, and here lend their crystalline clarity and pinpoint precision to an exciting program of works that includes Tallis’ monumental Suscipe quaeso, Byrd’s masterful Tribue domine, and contemporary works by Nico Muhly and Arvo Pärt.

Tallis Scholars

The sublime voices of Georgia’s Ensemble Basiani sing a transporting program highlighting the rich polyphonic music tradition of their homeland in the Caucasus. The diversity of Georgian vocal music is staggering, the style and character varying from region to region and mirroring aspects of daily life—music for prayer, work, healing, love, play. “Georgians do that,” explains director Zurab Tskrialashvili. “They just sing when working, traveling, in war, singing lullabies to babies.” Clad in traditional tunics and boots, the men of Basiani balance densely layered polyphony with rousing work songs, lively circle dances, and stirring table songs—and the unforgettable sound of krimanchuli, Georgian yodeling.

Ensemble Basiani

Discover little-known sacred works by Peruvian, Mexican, and Argentinian composers. From lovely a cappella motets to a magnificent Mass, we bring to light composers and works rarely heard in the Bay Area.  Music of Hernando Franco, Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, Sebastián Durón, and Domenico Zipoli, and several composers whose names are lost to time.

Treasures of the Spanish New World

Join us for our Festival finale with Vox Luminis, performing Johann Sebastian Bach’s iconic Magnificat, as well as a setting of the same text by Bach’s venerable predecessor at St. Thomas’s Church in Leipzig, Johann Kuhnau. Enjoy these two sumptuous and exuberant works, which demonstrate the high level of instrumental and vocal playing available to Kuhnau and Bach over their seven decades as cantors of St. Thomas. This exultant Christmas in June will leave listeners eagerly awaiting the return of the Festival in 2024.

Vox Luminis

On January 10, 1430, Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy founded the chivalric confraternity known as the Order of the Golden Fleece. Dedicated to “the exaltation of the faith and the Holy Church,” “the honor of St. Andrew,” and “the practice of virtues and good habits,” the Order and its members supported the creation of some of Europe’s most exquisite polyphony in the late 1400s. In this concert, GRAMMY Award-winning ensemble Chanticleer will present a program that includes music by Guillaume Du Fay, Johannes Ockeghem, Antoine Busnois, and Cristóbal Morales.

Founded in 1978 as an affiliate of The San Francisco Early Music Society, then also in its infancy, this is Chanticleer’s first appearance at the Festival in over a decade and a half. We are delighted to return to SFEMS’s roots in this special concert!

CHANTICLEER: No Mean Reward—Chanticleer and the Golden Fleece

Internationally-renowned Festival favorite Vox Luminis returns with Dietrich Buxtehude’s remarkable meditation on the body of the crucified Christ. A work of deep profundity, the seven-cantata Membra Jesu nostri employs relatively limited vocal and instrumental forces—for the most part, five voice parts, two violins and basso continuo—to create an atmosphere of dramatic exultation. Be prepared to be entranced by Vox Luminis’s traversal of this most ambitious work by the master of Lübeck.

Vox Luminis: Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostri

Concerts are Tuesday nights and begin at 7.30 p.m. in the second floor Ballroom of Julia Morgan's gorgeous <a>Berkeley City Club</a>, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, 2315 Durant Avenue, Berkeley.

Clerestory

Berkeley City Club

University Chorus and Chamber Chorus performs Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, along with members from UC Alumni Chorus and featuring Pacific BoyChoir Academy.

Choral events in Berkeley, CA

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