Season 60, 2023–2024
Sing for Joy! Psalms, Celebrations and Inspirations

2019-2020 Season

Buddy James In the Fall of 2019 we began an exciting new era in Bay Area choral performance! Our new Artistic Director Buddy James, a longtime fan of Schola, brought fresh and exciting ideas to our 2019–2020 season.

Our audiences were thrilled with our first concert of the season, when we introduced them to Duke Ellington’s rarely-performed Sacred Concert, an infusion of jazz and sacred themes that included the big band, The Daddios, jazz vocalist Juanita Harris, and even tap dancing!

Our holiday season concert was a fresh look at the magic of the holidays, with a performance of Kirke Mechem’s Seven Joys of Christmas, harp music, and of course, our delightful audience holiday carol sing-along! We were delighted to have Kirke Mechem in the audience as well as composer Brian Holmes whose work was also presented.

Our third concert, titled Into the West, included music from, and inspired by, the Great American West Coast. We performed Eric Whitacre’s charming Goodnight Moon, and Come to the Woods by Jake Runestad, based on the writings of John Muir. Also featured was the world premiere of a work by Eric Tuan, setting the poem Gilded Land, written by Sophia Smith, the winner of this year’s Poetry-to-Music Contest. This concert also saw our first use of multimedia in the form of slides projected during two of the works.

Our final concert of Season 56, a performance of Elijah by Felix Mendelssohn has been canceled due to the Coronavirus outbreak.