Concerts and Events
Upcoming Events
Concerts
Friday, December 6 at 7:30pm, Watts Hall, Thomaston and
Sunday, December 8 at 2pm, Rockport Opera House, Rockport
Down East Singers and Halcyon String Quartet present multi-media performances of Gustav Holst's On this Day Earth Shall Ring, selected movements of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, chamber music to be announced, and Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on Christmas Carols. All are welcome. Purchase tickets to the Watts Hall performance here.** Purchase tickets to the Rockport Opera House performance here.
*Please note, unless you select otherwise, the ticket form includes a $5 donation to Zeffy, a free online fundraising platform for nonprofits.
**The elevator at Watts Hall is temporarily out of service, making the concert inaccessible to individuals with mobility challenges. If this affects you, we encourage you to attend the Sunday concert at the Rockport Opera House instead.
Memorial Day, Monday, May 26, 2025 at 5 p.m, Watts Hall, Thomaston
Down East Singers and Mozart Mentors Orchestra present Antonin Dvorák's Requiem with soloists Erin Chenard, soprano; Jazmin DeRice, contralto; David Myers-Wakeman, tenor; and John David Adams, bass.
Admission $25. Students 18 and younger admitted free, but must have a ticket.
Our Most Recent Concert
Josef Haydn’s Mass in a Time of Anxiety (Lord Nelson Mass)
Down East Singers and Mozart Mentors Orchestra present Antonin Dvorák's Requiem with soloists Erin Chenard, soprano; Jazmin DeRice, contralto; David Myers-Wakeman, tenor; and John David Adams, bass.
Memorial Day, Monday, May 26, 2025 at 5 p.m, Watts Hall, Thomaston. View the recording here.
Previous Concerts
To Maine, With Love
Down East Singers and Halcyon String Quartet with accordionist Delmar Dustin Small present multi-media performances of Marianna Filippi's To Maine, With Love, Small's Wreathe the Holly, Twine the Bay, and Antonio Vivaldi's Gloria on Friday, December 8 at 7:30 p.m. at Watts Hall, 174 Main Street, Thomaston; and Sunday, December 10 at 2 p.m. at Rockport Opera House, 6 Central Street, Rockport. View the recording here.
Handel's Messiah (Parts II & III) - Memorial Day 2023
Down East Singers and Mozart Mentors Orchestra, conducted by Anthony Antolini, present the Easter portion of on Memorial Day, Monday, May 29, 2023, at 5 p.m. at Watts Hall, 174 Main Street, Thomaston, Maine.
Soloists include Erin Chenard, soprano; Jazmin DeRice, contralto; David Myers, tenor; and John David Adams, bass.
T-Acadie Collaboration
Friday, December 9th, 7:30PM
- Watts Hall, Thomaston
Sunday, December 11th, 2PM
- Rockport Opera House
2022 marks the second time Down East Singers has collaborated with folk trio T-Acadie. Band members Pam Weeks, Jim Joseph and Bill Olsen play a variety of music from the French Canadian and New England traditions. They also offer Cajun waltzes and blues, two-steps and Zydeco tunes and songs in three-part harmony.
Down East Singers "Noël Français" repertoire will include not only French-Canadian carols, but European French holiday music and some pieces in collaboration with T-Acadie, such as the lively dance tune "Si mon moine voulait danser," arranged by Quebec composer Donald Patriquin. Old favorites include Adolph Adam's "Cantique de Noël," with tenor soloist Hayden Sears, and new repertoire features soprano soloist Robyn Tarantino singing "Make me a channel of thy peace," which combines the Bach-Gounod "Ave Maria" with a setting of the Prayer of St. Francis.
Johannes Brahms:
A German Requiem
(Sung in German)
download program notes here
Sarah Tuttle, soprano soloist
John David Adams, baritone soloist
Mozart Mentors Orchestra
Anthony Antolini, conductor
5 PM Monday, May 30 (Memorial Day)
Watts Hall, 174 Main Street, Thomaston
Camden Amphitheatre
Sunday, October 17th, 2 p.m.
A free, live concert of American music from the Shakers and Quakers to Gospel and Spirituals. Works by Bill Cunliffe, William L. Dawson, Nick Page, Alice Parker and others. Guest artist: Fiddler Owen Kennedy playing fiddle tunes from around the U.S.A. The concert will be aired at a later date on Down East Singers' YouTube Channel. Cosponsored by Camden Public Library. Some chairs will be provided. Or bring your own chair or a blanket!
Memorial Day Virtual Concert
Monday, May 31st, 5pm
A virtual all-Rachmaninoff concert brought to you by Down East Singers and Bay Chamber Concerts, featuring members of Down East Singers, Bowdoin Chorus, and other choristers, a brass ensemble and Jennifer McIvor, keyboard. Choral repertoire will include an early part song, "Chorus of Spirits," and movements of Rachmaninoff’s 1910 Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (in Church Slavonic). Chamber music will feature cellist Matthew Smith and pianist Peipei Song performing Vocalise, and adding violinist Jesse MacDonald in a performance of the Trio élégiaque No. 1 in G minor. The video will be premiered free of charge at 5 PM on Monday, May 31, on Down East Singers' YouTube channel. Donations to Down East Singers will be gratefully accepted, please click below to make a contribution.
December 2020 Virtual Concert
Released on Sunday, Dec 13, 2pm - Available Now
A virtual concert brought to you by Bay Chamber Concerts, featuring members of Down East Singers, Bowdoin Chorus, and other choristers, Halcyon String Quartet, members of the Midcoast Brass Quintet, and Jennifer McIvor, keyboard accompanist. Repertoire includes Schubert's German Mass (sung in English), Bortniansky's setting of the Lord's Prayer (in English), Johnson's immortal African American anthem "Lift Every Voice and Sing," and the spiritual "We Shall Overcome." The video, created in a hayfield in Cushing, was premiered free of charge at 2 PM on Sunday, December 13 on Bay Chamber Concerts' YouTube Channel. Donations to Down East Singers and Bay Chamber Concerts & Music School will be gratefully accepted.
Maine Winter Music
December 2019
A collaboration with the Midcoast Brass Quintet. The repertoire included choral music by Maine composers Delmar Dustin Small and Sean Fleming. Other compositions by American composers Daniel Pinkham and Richard Dirksen were also accompanied by brass instruments.
Ernest Bloch’s Sacred Service / Avodath Hakodesh
May 2019
A magnificent, full-length Jewish liturgy sung in Hebrew with Cantor Scott Sokol, baritone soloist, and the Mozart Mentors Orchestra accompanying.
Hark! How the Bells!
December 2018
With the Saint Petersburg, Russia Men's Ensemble. Ukrainian and Russian sacred and secular pieces.
From Many… One
May 2018
With Mozart Mentors Orchestra and soprano soloist Emma Hallundbaek.
A Celtic Christmas: Music of Ireland, Scotland, Wales & Cornwall.
December 2017
With Castlebay Duo and David Myers, Jr., tenor.
Down East Singers presents The Creation, considered Haydn's greatest work.
May 2017
With soloists Erin Chenard, soprano; David Myers, Jr., tenor; John David Adams, bass-baritone; and Rebecca Worthington, soprano.
Heaven and Earth, Jenks and Jazz
December 2016
Christmas music influenced by dance rhythms and jazzy harmonies from the Renaissance to the 21st Century, including a musical tribute to the late Glenn Jenks, featuring his "Heaven and Earth.” And works by Praetorius, Schütz, Joubert, Biebl, Joplin, Zimmermann, Gruber, Beal, Booth, and Rodgers & Hammerstein.
Down East Singers, accompanied by Mozart Mentors Orchestra presents Mozart’s immortal Requiem.
May 2016
With soloists Sarah Tuttle, soprano; Joëlle Morris, mezzo-soprano; David Myers, tenor; and John David Adams, bass-baritone.
Also on the program are Mozart’s beloved motet, Ave verum corpus and a sing-along arrangement of America the Beautiful.
December 2015
Benjamin Britten: Ceremony of Carols
Kirke Mechem: The Seven Joys of Christmas
Henri Büsser: Le Sommeil de l’Enfant Jésus (Sleep of the Infant Jesus)
Michael Larkin: Fantasy on "Creator of the Stars of Night”
Frank Ferko: Festival of Carols
With Virginia Flanagan, harp soloist
A Festival of Carols, by American composer Frank Ferko, is based on five Christmas carol texts by 19th century American poets and hymn writers. Although it was the composer’s intention to use earlier American texts, he found that most Christmas carols sung in America prior to the 19th century were carols brought to this country by immigrants from their homelands in Europe. Thus, many of the early carols sung here did not originate in this country. The nineteenth century, however, did produce an abundance of new texts by American writers, and these were also set to music by American composers. Some of these carols have become quite well-known while others have remained relatively obscure. In A Festival of Carols all of the music is new whether or not the texts are familiar. Thus, the carols are not arrangements of previously existing tunes but entirely new melodies and harmonizations with the harp used both as an accompanying instrument and as an intrinsic thread within the larger musical fabric. A Festival of Carols was commissioned by the Dale Warland Singers. The music was composed in the summer and early fall of 2002 and first performed by the Dale Warland Singers at four performances in December 2002 of the annual Echoes of Christmas concerts.
Harps of Gold also includes one composition for solo voice and harp—Le Sommeil de l’Enfant Jésus (Sleep of the Infant Jesus) by Henri Büsser, a French composer of German ancestry who was born in 1872 in Toulouse.
Symphony of Psalms - Music from our Old Testament Heritage
May 2015
World premiere of a newly commissioned work by Elizabeth Brown for theremin, chorus and piano; Rachmaninoff's Vocalise performed on the theremin with piano accompaniment and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms for chorus and orchestra.
A Latin-American Christmas
December 2014
Argentine composer Ariel Ramírez's Misa Criolla and Navidad Nuestra for chorus, two tenor soloists and instrumental combo of guitar, percussion, keyboard, flutes and string bass. David Myers and Anthony Antolini, tenor soloists, Shannon M. Chase, guest conductor. Also on the program were choral arrangements from Colombia and Puerto Rico for chorus and combo.
As It Began to Dawn…
May 2014
A full-length Oratorio about the awe and mystery of the Resurrection by Maine native Delmar Dustin Small. Performed May 26, 2014 at the Camden Opera House, with Mozart Mentors Orchestra, vocal soloists and chorus.
Black Nativity in Concert
December 2013
On Dec. 11, 1961, at the 41st Street Theater in New York City, six gospel singers made history. Backed up by only a piano and a B-3 Hammond organ, they performed Black Nativity by African-American poet and playwright, Langston Hughes. He entitled it "A Gospel Song-play." Maine music historian Aaron Robinson has recreated the score of Black Nativity from the original recording as Black Nativity—In concert: A Gospel Celebration. Down East Singers performed it and other gospel music with pianist Jennifer McIvor and Hammond organist Sean Fleming on December 12 and December 22, 2013.
Memorial Day Blessings
May 2013
Karl Jenkins’ Requiem, for chorus, orchestra and shakuhachi (Japanese flute) and shorter works, including spirituals by William Dawson and Stravinsky's arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner. With Mozart Mentors Orchestra and Elizabeth Brown, shakuhachi master Monday, May 27, 2013, 5 PM Camden Opera House.
A Russian Christmas
December 2012
"A Russian Christmas,” with the St. Petersburg Men’s Ensemble, was presented on Thursday, December 6 at 7:30 PM at St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, Newcastle and Sunday, December 9 at 2:30 pm at Camden Opera House. The repertoire included sacred works by Bortniansky, Ippolitov-Ivanov, Stravinsky, Chesnokov, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky and seasonal folk songs arranged by Kalistratov, Leontovich and Prokhorov. The first half of the concert featured the St. Petersburg Men’s Ensemble performing both sacred and secular works for men’s voices. The second half of the concert was a collaboration between the St. Petersburg Men’s Ensemble and Down East Singers, including the original Ukrainian version of the popular Christmas song "Carol of the Bells.”
Peace Music
May 2012
Georg Frederic Handel’s Te Deum and Jubilate for the Peace of Utrecht were performed at the 2012 Memorial Day Concert in Camden and later at Blue Hill. The program included Stravinsky’s arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner, three traditional American spirituals and four Shaker songs, and was accompanied by the Mozart Mentors Orchestra.
Earlier Concerts
-Carmina Burana. Carl Orff's monumental 1937 masterpiece was performed on April 14, 2012, at Strom Auditorium under the auspices of Bay Chamber Concerts. Professional soloists included soprano Suzanne Nance, Music Director of Maine Public Radio; counter-tenor Daniel C. Stein and baritone Andrew Garland with pianists Sean Fleming and Jennifer McIvor.
-Noël Français. Three performances of a musical tribute to Maine’s French cultural heritage in a cornucopia of Poulenc’s Gloria and all-French Christmas choral works by composers including Fauré, Franck, and Duruflé as well as traditional carols. December 8th, 9th & 11th. The concert featured soloist Christina Astrachan. Down East Singers also shared the stage with Maine’s folk group ‘Ti Acadie performing Acadian, Cajun and French-Canadian Christmas songs and medleys.
-Spring 2011. Mozart's Regina Coeli K. 108, Solemn Vespers K. 339, Ave Verum Corpus K. 618, Walter Kittridge's Tenting on the Old Camp Ground (1863), William Steffe's Battle Hymn of the Republic, and Nathan Paul Scalzone's The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls (2010). May 30th & June 19, 2011. With Suzanne Nance, soprano soloist. Suzanne is the music director at Maine Public Radio, and host of the weekday morning classical music show from 9am-noon. The concert was performed with a new orchestra, the Mozart Mentors Orchestra, composed of area professionals and their top students.
-December 2010. Kirke Mechem's Seven Joys of Christmas, Christmas Past and Christmas Present, Birthdays in Round Numbers. December 10th & 12th, 2010. Dedicated to the memory of former DES singer Tom Bertocci, who died earlier this year. The program included a contemporary piece entitled "Thou shalt know him when he comes,” performed in memory of Tom who personally requested before he died that we sing this piece. On the same program, the new, smaller ensemble recruited from within the DES membership was introduced. They performed the Biebl Ave Maria and Heinrich Schütz's Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt (For God so love the world).
-Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, May 30 & June 11, 2010. Written in 1936, Dona Nobis Pacem is the composer’s stirring plea for peace following World War I and with Germany, Italy and Spain pushing Europe toward World War II. A multi-movement work setting the poetry of Walt Whitman and selections from the Bible. On the same program, music for handbells and chorus in collaboration with Penobscot Bay Ringers, Bunny Stanley, director.
-Rachmaninoff All Night Vigil (Vespers), December 2009 - Warren and Camden, ME. Rachmaninoff composed the hour-long Vespers in approximately two weeks during January and February 1915. Its premier performance was a war-relief fund-raising concert on March 10, 1915 by a choir of men and boys. The unaccompanied work is generally considered Rachmaninoff’s greatest choral composition and a monument of Russian Orthodox sacred music.
-Schubert's Mass in G and works by Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Kastalsky, and Kedroff, Memorial Day 2009, Rockland and Blue Hill, Maine. Schubert wrote the Mass in G when he was a teenager; it is filled with some of his most lyrical melodies and radiates a warm, soothing optimism.
-J.S. Bach's exuberant Magnificat in D, December 2008 in Rockport, Maine, including the seldom heard Christmas carol additions. Special guests on the program were the Lincoln Academy Lincolnaires, of Newcastle, directed by Beth Preston. DES also performed Gospodi pomiluy (Lord, Have Mercy) by Grigory Lvovsky, Hold On!, a spiritual arranged by Moses Hogan, and Go Where I Send Thee arranged by Nick Page.
-Luigi Cherubini's Requiem in C minor, Memorial Day 2008, performed in Rockland and Blue Hill, Maine. Composed in 1815, this work was especially admired by Schumann, Brahms and Beethoven and is the Requiem that was performed at Beethoven's own funeral.
-Rachmaninoff Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, March 2008, with the Rachmaninoff Choir, in Thomaston and Saco, Maine, and Cambridge and Haverhill, Massachusetts.
-Contemporary Greek American composers -- Anna Gallos, Theodore Bogdanos, Tikey Zes, Constantine Limberakis, Stephen Cardiasmenos - February 2008. With the Rachmaninoff Choir as demonstration choir for Anthony Antolini's presentation at the ACDA (American Choral Directors Association) Eastern Division convention in Hartford, Connecticut.
-Ottorino Respighi's Laud to the Nativity, December 2007. Performed in Rockport, with singers from Riley School and the Ashwood Waldorf School collaborating on the program. Laud to the Nativity, composed in 1930, is a melodious evocation of the manger scene as witnessed by the shepherds. Also on the program were Gordon Bok's Oh, I Am Calling and Moses Hogan's Music Down in My Soul.
-Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass (Mass in D minor), Memorial Day 2007. Also on the program was Rachmaninoff's "The Angel" from Six Choruses for Women's Voices.
-Gloria, John Rutter; Magnificat, Cesar Cui; Come, Bring with a Noise, Richard Francis, December 2006. Camden Hills Regional High School Chamber Singers and Women's Chorus collaborated with DES for these Feast Music concerts. Richard Francis is a composer living in Damariscotta.
-John Rutter's Requiem, May 29, 2006. Written in 1985, this Requiem is described by the composer as " … intimate rather than grand, contemplative and lyric rather than dramatic, consolatory rather than grim, approachable rather than exclusive."
-Sergei Rachmaninoff's Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, on Spring Tour 2006 to Peabody, Massachusetts, and the San Francisco Bay area and in March 2007 at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation in Boston. A highly expressive, emotional setting of the Russian Orthodox morning worship service, written in 1910 and rediscovered and revived by Anthony Antolini in 1985.
-Mozart's Missa Brevis in F, K 192, December 2 and 4, 2005. This "short mass" was written when Mozart was 18 years old for Salzburg Cathedral. Described by musicologist H. Abert as "the summit of Mozart's youthful masses," the Missa Brevis was performed in collaboration with the newly formed Odeon Chamber Ensemble. The concert also featured a rarely heard choral work by English composer Ivan Moody and movements from concertos by J.S. Bach and G. P. Telemann.
-Mozart's Requiem, May 30, 2005. This immortal masterpiece, left unfinished at Mozart's death and completed by a devoted student, presents a gripping depiction of The Last Judgment and the repose of the soul.
-Israel in Egypt, Handel's rarely heard oratorio for double chorus describing in vivid musical detail the events of the Passover story. Down East Singers joined with Bowdoin Chorus and Orchestra for this performance on May 1, 2005.
A Sampling of Repertoire from Earlier Seasons of Down East Singers
May 1992: Fauré: Pavane and Requiem
Dec. 1992 Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on Christmas Carols; Handel: Messiah Part I
May 1993 Rachmaninoff: Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
Dec. 1993 Pinkham: Christmas Cantata; Early New England Christmas music
May 1994 Piston: Carnival Song
Dec. 1994 Titov: O miraculous wonder; Rachmaninoff: Choral Concerto
May 1995 Orff: Carmina Burana
Dec. 1995 Mechem: Seven Joys of Christmas
May 1996 Haydn: Creation
Dec. 1996 Bernstein: Chichester Psalms; Mechem: Island in Space
May 1997 Music of American composers: Parker, Beach, Roberts, Crouch, Dawson
Dec. 1997: Britten: Ceremony of Carols
Mar. 1998 Schütz: St. John Passion; Haydn: Seven Last Words of Christ
Dec. 1998 Susa: A Christmas Garland; Tchaikovsky: The Legend
May 1999 Honegger: King David
Dec. 1999 Pinkham: Christmas Cantata; works by Chesnokov and Bortniansky
May 2000: Dvorák Requiem
Dec. 2000 Mechem: Seven Joys of Christmas
May 2001 Brahms: A German Requiem
Dec. 2001 Buxtehude: In dulci jubilo; McKean: Gloria
May 2002 Bloch: Sacred Service
Dec. 2002 Ramirez: Misa Criolla; Schroeder: Rorate coeli desuper
May 2003 Dvorák: In Nature’s Realm, Op. 63; works by Gorecki and Thompson
Dec. 2003 Handel: Messiah
May 2004 Kodály: Missa Brevis and Pange lingua; Roberts: Storm on Lake Galilee
Dec. 2004 Vivaldi: Gloria
Concert Tours of the Rachmaninoff Choir
2015 Concert Tour to Bangor, ME and Peabody, MA
2013 Concert tour to Dover, NH, Cambridge, MA, and Woonsocket, RI
2012 Concert tour to Hartford, CT and Cambridge, MA
2011 Concert tour to Newcastle, ME; New York City
2010 Concert tour to Lewiston, ME; Lowell, MA; Dover, NH
2009 Concert tour to Belgrade, Serbia; Sofia, Bulgaria; Thessaloniki, Lesvos and Athens, Greece
2008 Concert tour to Saco, ME; Cambridge, MA; Haverhill, MA
2007 Concert tour to Boston (Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation)
2006 Concert tour of Massachusetts (St. Vasilios Greek Orthodox Church, Peabody) and California (Holy Cross Church, Santa Cruz; Stanford Memorial Church, Stanford University; Grace Cathedral, San Francisco)
2003 Concert tour of New York, New Hampshire and Maine
2002 Concert tour of European Russia, Siberia and Russian Far East
2002 Concert tour of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine
2001 Concert tour of Maryland and Washington, D.C.
2000 Concert tour of Vermont, New Hampshire and Quebec
1999 Concert tour of New York and Massachusetts
1998 Concert tour of Maine and Vermont
1997 Concert tour of New Hampshire and Connecticut
1995 Concert tour of Northern Maine
1994 Concert tour of Western Massachusetts