KALEIDOSCOPE: 2025-26 SEASON
In a classical music world that feels increasingly specialized, The Thirteen has long defied easy classification. We are a choir and period orchestra that performs works from the Baroque at the highest levels of excellence. We are a tight-knit vocal ensemble, “race-car driver[s] in a high-performance vehicle” (Washington Classical Review), that performs some of the most virtuosic modern music written. We tackle works listed among classical radio’s ‘greatest hits,’ works by composers who have been excluded from recognition by virtue of their skin color or gender, and new works by a dizzying array of emerging composers. This broad approach to what we perform is a foundational aspect of our identity.
When asked about my artistic inspiration, I often talk about the capacity of vocal music to touch and inspire, using the kaleidoscope as a metaphor. Viewed through this metaphorical kaleidoscope, the corpus of vocal music refracts and recombines, joining together in endlessly colorful ways. Nothing is static as the kaleidoscope views a vast range of music, transforming it through the addition of new elements and textures, while yet preserving its original essence. This season celebrates this approach in a broad variety of music composed over the last five hundred years.
In planning this season, I was drawn to Palestrina, whose 500th birthday we celebrate in 2025. Palestrina was as pivotal as he was prolific: of the works he composed during his lifetime, over 7,000 remain. His impact on musical composition is hard to overstate, and his Missa Papae Marcelli (which we’ll perform in October), composed in reaction to the Council of Trent, would go on to have a significant impact on the future of western music. The 500 years since Palestrina’s birth have seen a kaleidoscopic flowering of Classical music, and it is this vast tapestry of music that I wanted to celebrate.
In this, our fourteenth season, I chose to push the boundaries of our repertoire to the limit. This season we perform music that has been composed over the last half millennium, spanning the Renaissance, the Baroque, the Classical, the Romantic, the Modern and Contemporary time periods in concert music. We unite the works of Italian, French, German, Russian, and American composers.
This season features pillars of our art form: Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Masses, Rachmaninoff’s finest vocal music, Duruflé’s Requiem and works by Brahms, Gesualdo, Martin, Monteverdi and more. And yet, for too long, women composers and composers of color have been written out of the canon, and in November and May we explore some of these vital voices, including a new commission from composer Diedre Robinson in October.
I hope that you will continue to believe in the art that The Thirteen creates by subscribing to our 2025-2026 season today. I invite you to subscribe rather than waiting for individual ticket sales and to consider purchasing our Preferred Seating option, which provides the best seats in the house. And, if you’re unable to attend our concerts in person, we will continue to make each and every of our programs available virtually. Finally, I invite you to go one step beyond subscribing and to consider sustaining the art we make with a donation to The Thirteen.
I look forward to seeing you and your friends at our concerts this season!
