About

Baltimore Choral Arts Society builds a stronger, more connected, more inspired community by celebrating the joy of choral music through exceptional performances and diverse educational and artistic partnerships.

Baltimore Choral Arts Society, currently celebrating 60 years of choral innovation, is one of Maryland's premier cultural institutions. Under the leadership of Music Director Anthony Blake Clark, The Symphonic Chorus, Chorus, and Chamber Singers perform throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, as well as in Washington, D.C., New York, and in Europe, and collaborate with other prestigious organizations, such as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, National Philharmonic, and Maryland Symphony Orchestra. In June 2025, Choral Arts went on its third European tour under the direction of Maestro Clark, with performances in Amsterdam, Lübeck, and Berlin, and concluded with an appearance at the CHORALSPACE festival at the Berliner Philharmonie, directed by Simon Halsey.

Baltimore Choral Arts provides several thoughtful and impactful music education programs that serve youth in and around Baltimore. These programs include CoroLAB, a partnership with Overlea High School and Baltimore City College's choral music programs; Vocal Fellows, an expanded professional development program for early-career singers; Student Composer Project, a competition for high-school and college composers; and Sing and Play, a series of free early childhood music classes, presented in partnership with the Enoch Pratt Free Library and the Kennedy Krieger Institute’s World of Care program. Through these educational programs, Choral Arts serves the very young to early-career adult musicians.

As part of an ongoing effort to make choral music accessible to the greater Baltimore community, Choral Arts offers multiple free concerts and workshops every year through its Discovery Series. Recent Discovery performances have included Baltimore’s Big Sing, presented in collaboration with Artscape, and Come-and-Sing workshops featuring choral-orchestral masterworks with the Peabody Graduate Conducting Studio, under the direction of Marin Alsop.

For 25 years, WMAR Television, the ABC network affiliate in Maryland, featured Choral Arts in an hour-long special, Christmas with Choral Arts, which won an Emmy® Award in 2006. In 2022, Christmas with Choral Arts was broadcast on Maryland Public Television, bringing the performance to new audiences. Also in 2022, Choral Arts collaborated with composer Jasmine Barnes to present Mozart’s Requiem Reframed, which was recorded by Maryland Public Television for the Emmy® Award-winning episode, Artworks: Dreamer. The ensemble has been featured frequently on The First Art (Public Radio International), Performance Today (National Public Radio) and VOX (XM Radio). In Europe, Choral Arts was featured in a program devoted to the music of Handel broadcast on Radio Suisse Romande. 

Baltimore Choral Arts Society recently celebrated the release of their newest album, Dreamer, on Acis Records, featuring Maestro Clark’s new edition of Mozart’s Requiem and Portraits: Douglass and Tubman, an original comission by Jasmine Barnes. Choral Arts has two other recordings in current release: Christmas at America's First Cathedral, recorded at the Baltimore Basilica, which includes familiar Christmas favorites as well as premieres by Rosephanye Dunn Powell and James Lee, III, and a recording with Dave Brubeck, featuring Brubeck’s oratorio, The Gates of Justice, which was released internationally on the NAXOS label in 2004; Choral Arts is also featured on Introducing the World of American Jewish Music on Naxos, and a live recording of the Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil. Other awards and recognitions include the 2020 Chorus America/ASCAP Alice Parker Award, the 2020 American Prize in Community Chorus Conducting (Anthony Blake Clark), and the 2020 Emmy Award nomination for the 2019 Christmas with Choral Arts broadcast.

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