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The William Baker Festival Singers is a 50-voice semi-professional chorale specializing in sacred short-form classical works and spirituals, along with masterworks for chorus and orchestra, performed annually with members of the Kansas City Symphony. Tracing its history to the original Festival Singers created by William O. Baker in Atlanta in 1985, the present ensemble in Kansas City was founded in October 1998 and is now in its 27th concert season.
The Festival Singers has toured across the South, Midwest and Northeast, including performances in New York City, Chicago, Washington, DC, Princeton, Des Moines, Omaha, Austin, San Antonio, New Orleans, Arkansas, Milwaukee and Atlanta. The Festival Singers has produced over 25 nationally released recordings, and have appeared on national radio programs including The Sounds of Majesty, The First Art and National Public Radio’s Performance Today. The choir has been featured in hour-long holiday specials on Radio Bach, the Kansas City CBS Television affiliate KCTV-5, and numerous broadcasts on Kansas Public Radio.
Recent masterworks performances have included, W.A. Mozart: Great Mass in C minor, J.S. Bach's Matthäus-Passion BWV 244 and Mass in B minor BWV 232, and Ernest Bloch: Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service) which, at the time, were the first performances of the works by Kansas City artists in decades. Other recent performances have included the Requiems of John Rutter, Gabriel Fauré, W.A. Mozart, and Johannes Brahms, the Midwest premier of William Dreyfoos’ Songs of the Holocaust, Zoltán Kodály’: Laudes Organi, L.v. Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, W.A. Mozart’s Coronation Mass, and Regina Coeli, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, and many others.
2013 Maurice Duruflé: Introit et Kyrie from Requiem in Helzberg Hall
2014 Johannes Brahms: Movement II from A German Requiem
2015 Elder: Ballade to the Moon
2018 W.A. Mozart: KYRIE from Great Mass in C minor
2019 Esenvalds: O Salutaris Hostia
2019 Schulz-Widmar: Good Friday Anthems
2020 Ed Frazier Davis O Magnum Mysterium
2020 Ed Frazier Davis: Swing Down, Chariot
2022 Esenvalds: Northern Lights
2022 Byron Smith: He'll Make a Way
2022 William Henry Smith: Ride the Chariot
2022 Candlelight, Carols & Cathedral
2022 Joseph Jennings: Steal Away
2023 Johannes Brahms: Ein Deutches Requiem
2024 American/Alice Parker: O Happy Souls
2025 J.S. Bach: Mass in B minor BWV 232
Membership in the William Baker Festival Singers is by competitive audition. Auditions are heard in August and January of each year, or as vacancies in the chorus occur. |
