Step into a world where the power of music transcends time and space, as the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and The May Festival present a series of choral and orchestral events. From the divine resonance of Handel's 'Messiah' to the heart-stirring 'Verdi Requiem,' these performances promise an unforgettable experience. With maestros like Sir Andrew Davis and celebrated performers including Renée Fleming, these concerts offer a sublime blend of classical traditions and contemporary flair, igniting the holiday spirit through the universal language of music.

Harmony of Holidays: A Celebration of Choral and Orchestral Masterpieces

This May, The May Festival presents an exhilarating series of performances that underscore the power and beauty of choral and orchestral music. From the world premiere of Howard Helvey's new work to the evocative journey of Verdi's Requiem, these events bring together a spectacular array of talent and creative expression. Featuring renowned artists like Renée Fleming and innovative compositions, this festival is a must-see for music lovers eager to experience the profound impact of collaborative harmony.

Harmony in Motion: Celebrating Choral Grandeur at The May Festival

This year, the May Festival is bringing together a diverse array of choral and orchestral performances that promise to captivate audiences with their emotional depth and artistic brilliance. From the Cincinnati Boychoir's collaborative celebration to the soul-stirring Verdi Requiem, and a unique exploration of nature's voice through music, each event offers a distinct experience. Join us as we delve into the festival's lineup, highlighting the talented artists and the creative works that make this year's festival truly remarkable.

Harmonizing Voices: A Journey Through the May Festival's 2025 Choral and Orchestral Spectacle

Experience the vibrant confluence of music, art, and storytelling at The May Festival, where a series of captivating performances bring the power of choral and orchestral music to life. From Verdi's emotive Requiem to an artistic journey illuminated by Renée Fleming's voice, these events promise to engage and inspire audiences. Join us as we explore the details of each performance, immersing ourselves in a world where creativity and emotion take center stage.

A Symphony of Voices: Highlighting The May Festival's Dazzling Performances

The May Festival presents a series of enthralling musical events, each offering a unique auditory experience. From the soul-stirring Verdi Requiem to the choral exploration in Chasing the Dawn, and the personal narratives in The Brightness of Light, to nature's symphony in Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene, these events promise to captivate audiences. With renowned performers like Renée Fleming and Ramón Tebar, this festival is a celebration of artistic excellence and diversity, showcasing a blend of classical compositions and modern interpretations.

Captivating Harmonies: Exploring the May Festival's Unique Musical Journey

Dive into a remarkable musical journey as The May Festival presents a series of captivating events that embrace the power of voice and orchestral prowess. From the intense emotions of Verdi's Requiem to the illuminating choral journey of 'Chasing the Dawn,' and the intimate portrayal of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz in 'The Brightness of Light,' these experiences redefine the art of performance. The artistic contributions of renowned talents like Renée Fleming and Ramón Tebar blend seamlessly with stunning visuals, creating an atmosphere of pure auditory and visual delight.

A Symphony of Voices: The May Festival's Unforgettable Musical Journey

The May Festival 2025 season offers a diverse array of musical journeys, from the raw power of Verdi’s Requiem to the introspective exploration of nature in 'Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene.' The festival welcomes renowned artists such as Renée Fleming and Ramón Tebar, and unfolds across breathtaking venues, enriching the cultural tapestry with performances that resonate beyond the concert hall. Whether through orchestral magnificence or choral glow, this year’s lineup promises soul-stirring experiences that connect deeply with audiences.

A Symphony of Voices: The May Festival's 2025 Season

Embark on a captivating journey this May and December as Cincinnati's May Festival brings a series of breathtaking musical events. From the haunting beauty of Verdi's 'Requiem' to the innovative choral masterpiece 'CHASING THE DAWN,' and the intimate portrayal of artists in 'The Brightness Of Light,' these concerts promise to stir the soul and ignite the imagination. With the powerful sounds of orchestras and the melodic charm of choral ensembles, this year's lineup is set to resonate with music lovers and cultural enthusiasts alike.

A Symphony of Sound: Cincinnati's May Festival 2025

The May Festival's 2025 season offers an extraordinary line-up of performances that promise to engage the heart and soul. From Verdi's soul-stirring Requiem to Handel’s timeless Messiah, each event brings unique artistic elements and emotional depth. Renowned artists like Renée Fleming and Ramón Tebar join forces with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the May Festival Chorus to create unforgettable musical experiences. With diverse genres ranging from choral to orchestral, this season is set to captivate audiences and leave lasting impressions.

A Symphony of Emotions: Exploring May Festival's 2025 Lineup

The trumpet shall sound. Join the CSO, the May Festival Chorus and an all-star cast of soloists for Handel’s Messiah. Music Director Cristian Mӑcelaru conducts one of his most cherished works, featuring joyful movements like the famous Hallelujah Chorus that have become forever and ever holiday traditions. This is the Messiah experience of the season!

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Handel’s Messiah

Cincinnati Music Hall

Can you hear the bells? Rachmaninoff’s choral symphony The Bells — inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s poem of the same name — evokes the experience of bells ringing through the phases of life, and features Cincinnati’s own May Festival Chorus. Then, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique takes you inside the delirious fever-dream of a young artist driven mad by unrequited love. Fueled by opium-induced hallucinations, the visions culminate in a sabbath dance where the bells toll a haunting clamor

The Bells & Symphonie Fantastique

In a performance inspired by her 2023 Grammy-Award winning album, experience the turbulence and resilience of Mother Nature's life as Renée Fleming performs music by Handel, Nico Muhly, Björk and Lord of The Rings' Howard Shore—all set against a backdrop of stunning film from the National Geographic Society.

VOICE OF NATURE: The Anthropocene

The Geraldine V. Chavez Center for the Choral Arts

Glimpse into the love, life and intimacy between two of the 20th century’s most prominent artists. Celebrated soprano Renée Fleming and baritone Rod Gilfry portray painter Georgia O’Keeffe and photographer Alfred Stieglitz as a montage of their lives, captured through art, photos and love letters, is revealed on a screen above the stage

The Brightness Of Light

Follow the unbroken path of light from sunset to sunrise as the May Festival Chorus, Chamber Choir, Youth Chorus and Cincinnati Boychoir Ambassadors illuminate Springer Auditorium through song, staging and dynamic lighting in a choral music event like never before.

CHASING THE DAWN: A Choral Journey

Visceral and soul-gripping, Verdi’s Requiem will rip your heart out and put it back together again. From its tender solo moments to the terrifying cries of the “Dies irae,” it’s a journey both fragile and powerful as the May Festival Chorus and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra combine for this breathtaking Mass for the departed.

Verdi Requiem

Can't wait until May? Hundreds of singers take the stage at Music Hall in February to celebrate a new alliance between the May Festival and the Cincinnati Boychoir! Featured performances by the Cincinnati Boychoir, May Festival Youth Chorus and May Festival Chorus culminate in the world premiere of a new work by Cincinnati's own Howard Helvey, commissioned for the occasion.

All Together Now

Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio blends the soaring melodies of Baroque music with the joyous spirit of the holiday season. The rich harmonies and intricate counterpoint come together in jubilant choruses and tender arias, narrating and reflecting upon the stories of the Feast of Christmas. Richard Egarr leads the May Festival Chorus and soloists in the timeless glories of music that resonates with the warmth and wonder of Christmas.   

Bach's Christmas Oratorio

The trumpet shall sound. Join the CSO, the May Festival Chorus with Director of Choruses Matthew Swanson, and an all-star cast of soloists for the return of Messiah to Music Hall. Sir Andrew Davis leads a true-to-original edition of the Handel’s masterwork, bringing out the glories of movements like the Hallelujah Chorus with sparklingly highlights from the entire Orchestra — an uplifting event for making forever and ever holiday memories.

Handel's Messiah

Conductor Marin Alsop leads the CSO in essential classics by Leonard Bernstein and Dmitri Shostakovich. The May Festival Chorus joins for Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, sacred music that illuminates a path to eternal peace, and which notably includes music cut from the Prologue of West Side Story. Shostakovich’s Leningrad martials every artistic defense, and might of the whole Orchestra, against a merciless and tyrannical siege threatening to consume all. 

Bernstein & Shostakovich

Julia Wolfe’s Her Story invokes the words of historical figures and the spirit of pivotal moments in history to pay tribute to the centuries of ongoing struggle for equal rights and representation for women in America. From the letters of Abigail Adams to words attributed to Sojourner Truth, Her Story, as explained by Julia Wolfe, “captures the passion and perseverance of women refusing subordination, demanding representation and challenging the prejudice and power structures that have limited women’s voices.” The dynamic vocal artists of the Lorelei Ensemble join the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for this immersive and visual presentation, with staging by Anne Kauman, before the May Festival Chorus closes the program with Gabriel Fauré’s tender and comforting Requiem.

Her Story

Celebrating the natural wonders of earth and the perseverance of miners in Pennsylvania coal country, this program reflects both the beauty and tragedy of humanity’s relationship with our planet. Natural History is a collaboration between composer Michael Gordon and the Steiger Butte Singers. Written and commissioned to mark the centennial of the National Park System, the piece poses the question: If Crater Lake National Park were a symphony, what would it sound like? The result is a surround-sound celebration of nature and the park’s spiritual connection to the surrounding community. In contrast, Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Anthracite Fields is a haunting and powerful oratorio that captures not only the sadness of lives lost in the anthracite coal fields at the turn of the 20th century, but a way of daily life now also lost. The Bang on a Can All-Stars lend their ferocity to this profound work alongside the May Festival Chorus.

Voices of the Earth

Anthems can represent freedom from suffering or victory in war, celebrate nations, sow peace or even pump up a crowd from the rock ‘n’ roll stage. What they all share in common is the power to unite and remind us of our shared humanity. This program of four unique anthem interpretations opens with the world premiere of Julia Wolfe’s choral work All that breathes, which embraces the massive sound of collective breath and exhalation, while David Lang‘s the national anthems reminds us that freedom is fragile, delicate and easy to lose. Julia Wolfe’s Pretty is a raw and raucous feminist anthem of work rhythms — thwarting notions of what pretty can mean. Closing out the program is Vaughan Williams’ beloved anthem for peace, Dona nobis pacem, written and premiered just a few years prior to the start of World War II.

Anthems

As the May Festival enters a new era of artistic innovation and collaboration, it seems only fitting to begin the 2024 Festival with a work symbolizing creation. Few works of sacred music are more cheerful and joyous than Haydn's The Creation. It exemplifies Haydn’s own personal faith and optimism in humanity, as well as his profound belief in music’s ability to edify, uplift and inspire. Through the inspired use of soloists, full chorus and orchestra, The Creation depicts and celebrates the creation of the earth, and all of its flora and fauna, as narrated in Biblical passages from Genesis and Psalms, as well as from John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

The Creation

With prayerful music for both the living and the dead, the source of comfort in Brahms’ German Requiem is as much human as it is the divine. Louis Langrée leads the CSO along with the May Festival Chorus in Brahms’ large-scale masterpiece. Though Brahms was often discreet in nature, this is a deeply personal work. Spurred by the loss of his mother, and influenced by lingering emotions of self-doubt, he turned to his true religion – music – as a way to console not only himself, but others as well.

Brahms' German Requiem

California State University LA

Mahler called his Eighth Symphony, “the biggest thing that I have ever done…in which the most beautiful instrument in the world is given its true place.” Music Director Laureate James Conlon concludes the 150th May Festival with a work of gigantic proportions—music of triumph and transcendence that celebrates the power of the human voice, featuring the sounds of the Chorus and the CSO in the breathtaking space of Music Hall.

Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand

Celebrated maestra Marin Alsop makes her May Festival debut with a showcase of composers who crafted the American musical identity. Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is a lyrical dream of the Tennessee summer, while Aaron Copland's "The Promise of Living" rings with the hope of prosperity. The "uncanny radiance" (The New Yorker) of Robert Nathaniel Dett's The Ordering of Moses— a work the Festival premiered in 1937—returns to Music Hall.

Marin Alsop: American Voices

Principal Conductor Juanjo Mena opens the 150th Festival with world premieres by American composer James Lee III and former May Festival Creative Partner James MacMillan. Given its American premiere at the 1875 May Festival, Bach's celebratory Magnificat was described then as we would now— as "the highest form of human expression."

Bach's Magnificat

The Cincinnati Pops presents the music of one of cinema's greatest living composers — Hans Zimmer. From the antics of Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean and the eerie, breathless space of Interstellar, to the arrival on Arrakis in Dune and the battle scenes in Gladiator, you’ll relive some of the most epic moments from Hans Zimmer’s most enduring film scores. Experience the musical thrill of these films and more as they’re brought vividly to life with only the sound of the Pops.

The Music Of Hans Zimmer

From myth to fire to consolation, this program traces a journey through passion, virtuosity and reflection. Dorothy Howell’s Lamia opens with a darkly lyrical, evocative story of a nymph and her fate at the hands of a jealous god. In her CSO debut, violinist Alexandra Conunova brings fiery energy and soaring lyricism to Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto, one of the 20th century’s great Romantic concertos. Two choral works by Brahms offer final consolation: Nänie laments the inevitability of death through three episodes from Greek mythology, while Schicksalslied ("Song of Destiny") contrasts the eternal bliss of immortals with the restlessness of human existence.

Songs Of Destiny

Richard Strauss’ blends motifs depicting humor and heroism to reflect Don Quixote’s quixotic adventures, brought vividly to life by Alisa Weilerstein. CSO’s own Christian Colberg joins as the steadfast sidekick, helping to tell this larger-than-life story. Enescu’s Symphony No. 3, an extraordinarily rare work not performed in America for at least a century, was written in the shadow of Dante’s Inferno. Scored for an orchestra of Mahlerian proportions in size, of Wagnerian power in scope and Bach-like tenderness in intimacy, this composition offers a true universe of human existence — destiny, transcendence and final peace. Our Music Director’s passion for sharing Enescu’s genius makes him the ultimate interpreter of this symphony.

Don Quixote & Enescu Symphony No. 3

Bach’s St. Matthew Passion is one of the most profound and moving works in the choral repertoire. From the opening chorus to the final chorale, Bach weaves a tapestry of human sorrow, divine grace and ultimate redemption. The work’s intimate arias and powerful choruses illuminate the emotional depth of the Passion story, moving seamlessly between movements of personal reflection and monumental spiritual drama. This is music that confronts loss and suffering with honesty, yet ultimately offers solace through transcendence. 

May Festival Chorus

Sep 19, 2026

The Music Of Hans Zimmer

17 - 18 Oct, 2026

Songs Of Destiny

22 - 23 Jan, 2027

Don Quixote & Enescu Symphony No. 3

13 - 14 Mar, 2027

Bach St. Matthew Passion

5 - 6 Dec, 2025

Handel’s Messiah

8 - 9 Nov, 2025

The Bells & Symphonie Fantastique

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May Festival Chorus