Because of you, CSD is able to sing!

 

In 2025-2026, the Choral Society of Durham presented performances and other activities that focused on audience engagement. 

 

We started the season with SummerSing, a yearly opportunity to sing through our repertoire for the year, open to all in the community. One purpose of this is to introduce ourselves to potential new singers; we want them to feel welcomed before they audition, to reduce anxiety.

 

Our annual Messiah sing-along invited the audience to serve as the chorus. We followed this with our sold-out December 2025 concert in Duke Chapel. We invited you - the audience - to sing with us on one piece, which you did with enthusiasm, ensuring that we will repeat this next December.

 

We like collaborations, such as our February concert of Martín Palmeri’s MisaTango/Tango a Buenos Aires, which was performed at Riverside High School, jointly with the Riverside Rapids, their auditioned choral group. The concert featured select musicians from Mallarmé Players, the Lorena Guillén Tango Ensemble, and a bandoneón player. Four tango dancers not only performed during the concert, but offered free tango lessons afterward, in which 25 couples participated. The concert was livestreamed to 120 people in other states, from Maine to Arizona. The next collaboration was our Chamber Choir's partnership with handbell group Bell Durham in April 2026.

 

Our capstone concert was Verdi’s majestic Requiem. Again, this was a sold-out concert, in Baldwin Auditorium, where we were joined by 52 instrumentalists from Mallarmé Players, and four soloists.

 

We ended the season with the fourth annual Durham Community Sing, which has become our premier example of community collaboration. Two hundred seventy-five singers – from area choruses and interested community members – spent two hours on a Saturday morning rehearsing pieces to be performed in a free concert that afternoon. There is no cost for groups and individuals to participate. 

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Many of our concerts are free to attend, and ticket sales do not cover the cost of performing. Thanks to you, we had a successful year! 

2026-2027: A Year of Unexpected Musical Blends

The coming season, CSD will be offering exciting newer works alongside more familiar favorites. In April, we’ll be presenting both a bluegrass mass (accompanied by a bluegrass band) and pieces in the blues style. May will feature both Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem and two movements from contemporary composer Christopher Tin’s The Drop That Contained the Sea.

 

But perhaps most exciting will be an early-season performance we call “Durham Gathers to Remember: 25th Anniversary Commemoration of 9/11.” In collaboration with the Durham Symphony Orchestra, we will gather on September 10th in the Durham Armory to sing Mozart’s Requiem. We’ll be providing our audience with the opportunity to remember and grieve as part of a community listening to what we know will be a first-class performance.

Woven through all we do: The Community Collaboration Fund

The Community Collaboration Fund is an endowment from which we draw, and to which donors may contribute, each year. Our CCF allows us to bring diverse works to diverse audiences in diverse venues, and to collaborate with other local arts organizations who may have fewer resources. ​Your donation to the CCF will help ensure us a bright, collaborative future! The proceeds from this endowment will fund specific projects each year to aid CSD’s community-building mission:

To strengthen our community by engaging with the rich diversity of its people and building transformative connections as a force for unity
 

Please consider supporting CSD with a gift to our 2026-2027 operating fund, our Community Collaboration Fund — or both! Click here. Questions? Please contact our Development Chair.