Thursday, May 29, 2025
Along with excerpts from (as a social media post put it) “all the choral bangers” — Handel’s “Messiah,” Beethoven’s Ninth, the Mozart, Brahms and Verdi Requiems and Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” — the Choral Arts Society of Washington’s diamond jubilee concert will feature a commissioned world premiere: “To Imagine Creation” by Filipino Chinese composer Saunder Choi.
Speaking at The Georgetowner’s May 22 Cultural Leadership Breakfast at 1310 Kitchen and Bar, Choral Arts Artistic Director Marie Bucoy-Calavan said she told Choi she had something like a Disney fireworks show in mind.
“Okay, I got it,” responded the young Los Angeles-based composer, who sang on the scores of “The Lion King,” “Mulan” and “Turning Red,” among other films. Having earned a communications degree at De La Salle University in Manila, Choi moved to the U.S. to study at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, then completed a master’s degree at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music.
Titled “The Choral Legacy: 60 Years of Creating Stories Through Voice,” the concert will be presented on Sunday, June 15, at 2 p.m. in the Kennedy Center Opera House. The soloists are soprano Tiffany Choe, mezzo-soprano Leah Heater, tenor Jonny Kaufman and bass Hunter Enoch.
Director of choral studies at the University of Akron since 2014, Bucoy-Calavan — who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from California State University, Fullerton, and a doctoral degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music — guest-conducted Choral Arts’ “O Night Divine” Christmas concert in 2023. She was named the organization’s fourth artistic director (following founder Norman Scribner, Scott Tucker and Jace Kaholokula Saplan) the following year, taking up the post in September.
Commenting that there are “not a lot of what I call mom-conductors” — her son is turning 1 and her daughter 4 — Bucoy-Calavan shared that she is also part of the Sandwich Generation; her parents (both currently facing health issues) moved with her from California to Ohio and from Ohio to Washington, D.C.
The District is home to two other symphonic choruses, the Cathedral Choral Society and the Washington Chorus, plus plenty of smaller choral ensembles. Expanding on a Choral Arts initiative launched in 1982, she sees the organization’s place as the “Ambassador Chorus,” collaborating with embassies to “present their music and their culture in a choral way.”
Focusing on Estonia during the 2024-25 season, Choral Arts partnered with the Baltimore Washington Estonian Chorus, with chorus members learning to sing in the language (“Estonian,” she noted, “is not a walk in the park”).
The next partnership will be with the Philippine Embassy. Bucoy-Calavan’s heritage is mostly Filipino, with some Chinese and Spanish, and 2026 is the 80th anniversary of Filipino-American relations.
Bucoy-Calavan also envisions Choral Arts as an ambassador for choral music and for choral pre-professionals. To the general public: “We can be your gateway drug.” The 60th anniversary concert, continuously narrated, “will be a bit interactive,” she said, with details to follow. Referencing her own experience, she highlighted the advantages for graduate students of working with a professional chorus. Unlike when they sing with fellow college students, singers in a “Choral Scholars” program make a range of community connections, especially in D.C. (“This person over here works for the Department of Defense”).
Choral Arts comprises 138 full-season singers (150 will sing at the June 15 concert). While a few have participated for 40 or even 50 years, about two-thirds of the new “class” of 28 is under age 30, she said. Want to join up? The next group audition dates are June 17 and Aug. 12.
When a breakfast attendee commented that video games were a musical entry point for one of her children, Bucoy-Calavan — who said she sang on a “Final Fantasy” program and prepared a chorus to sing video game music — agreed, adding: “It’s almost movie music on steroids.”
In response to a question about funding, she said the loss of federal grants required her to significantly cut Choral Arts’ production budget for the 2025-26 season. If you have received emailed pleas for support from arts organizations struggling to survive, many of which are “still recovering from Covid,” she said, “it is real.”
At one point, Bucoy-Calavan read aloud from the draft narration for the 60th anniversary concert, which included the phrase: “the invisible walls between us begin to crumble.” The nation’s division, she said, “feels particularly palpable now.” However, choral music can be “an inspiration for us to come together … a vowel, a consonant, a breath.”