Join the May Festival Chamber Choir and May Festival Youth Chorus for a tradition that began over 40 years ago—witnessing the sonic experience of music in a sacred space, where voices bloom.

Music Director Juanjo Mena opens the 150^th Festival with new works by American composer James Lee III and former May Festival Creative Partner James MacMillan. Premiered in the U.S. by the May Festival in 1875, Bach’s Magnificat was described then as we would now—as “the highest form of human expression.” Written for a sacred feast, the work cleverly turns Latin texts into a dazzling musical picture gallery.

Celebrated Maestra Marin Alsop makes her May Festival debut, leading a program showcasing composers who crafted the American musical identity. Samuel Barber’s Knoxville transports us to a lyrical dream of a Tennessee summer, while Aaron Copland’s “The Promise of Living” rings with Midwestern hope of prosperity. Also, the “uncanny radiance” (The New Yorker) of Robert Nathaniel Dett’s The Ordering of Moses returns to Music Hall—a work the Festival premiered in 1937 and later performed and recorded at Carnegie Hall.

Conductor James Conlon, the beloved former Music Director of the May Festival whose 37-year tenure as artistic leader remains the longest in Festival history, returns to lead a new work by American composer Julia Adolphe and Mozart’s famous music for a Requiem mass. First performed by the May Festival in 1882, the Requiem radiates fearless brilliance—sacred music for The Last Judgement that touches on the sublime.

Mahler called his Eighth Symphony, “the biggest thing that I have ever done…in which the most beautiful instrument in the world is given its true place.” Music Director Juanjo Mena concludes the 150th May Festival with a work with gigantic proportions—music of triumph and transcendence that celebrates the power of the human voice, featuring the sounds of the Chorus and the CSO in the breathtaking space of Music Hall.