William Baker Festival Singers at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church

The William Baker Festival Singers will close their 28th season with a program that feels less like a standard choral concert and more like a lovingly chosen retrospective. William Baker, Founder and Artistic Director of the Festival Singers, described it himself as the group’s “greatest hits album,” noting that his favorite rock bands of the 1970s always released a compilation that distilled their essence. This concert, he said, “was the record that I would want to buy first.”

The Festival Singers presents its Home Concert at 3 p.m. May 3 at the ensemble’s spiritual home, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in downtown Kansas City. And this year, the Festival Singers won’t be alone. In a first-time collaboration, the Lawrence Civic Choir will join them for a shared weekend of music, culminating in the concert at St. Mary’s.

Collaboration has long been part of the Choral Foundation’s mission, but this particular pairing has been a long time coming. Baker explained that the organization has always sought to “be a resource and an encouragement and an empowerment for all of the choral entities in the city.” Over the years, the Festival Singers have partnered with dozens of ensembles, but never with the Lawrence Civic Choir—despite the fact that many of its members travel to Kansas City each summer to sing in the Summer Singers of Kansas City.

This season felt like the right moment. The two choirs will exchange concerts over the same weekend: the Festival Singers will appear as guests of the Lawrence Civic Choir in Topeka on May 2, and the Lawrence ensemble will return the favor at St. Mary’s on May 3. Baker noted that the Lawrence singers will present a set of their own before joining the Festival Singers for the final three works of the afternoon.

The program begins in the 12th century with Hildegard von Bingen, whose music has enjoyed a remarkable resurgence in recent decades. Baker reflected on the astonishing fact of her authorship: a woman writing music of such authority nearly a millennium ago. Her chant O Quam Mirabilis, he said, “set the spirit of this concert,” with its vision of God beholding the human face and seeing the fulfillment of creation. The women of the Festival Singers will offer the chant unaccompanied, allowing Hildegard’s luminous intervals to bloom in the resonant stone of St. Mary’s.

From there, the ensemble moves forward eight centuries to Jean Berger’s setting of Isaiah, Vision of Peace—an invocation of nations gathering in peace. It’s a thematic thread that winds through the entire program.

Hildegard von Bingen: Scivias (Know the Ways), circa 1140–50

No Festival Singers home concert would be complete without a set of early American hymns, and Baker has chosen three of his favorites. Samuel Webb’s Come Ye Disconsolate, with text by Thomas Moore, opens the set. It is followed by the tender and rarely heard The Pensive Dove, arranged by Alice Parker. Baker quoted its Victorian poetry with clear affection: “Faith smiled and shed a tender tear to see me search around, and whispered I can tell you where the dove of peace may be found.” The set concludes with the rollicking camp-meeting energy of The Morning Trumpet.

Composer-in-residence Sean Sweeden has become a defining voice for the Festival Singers, and this season included an entire concert devoted to his work. The ensemble also traveled to Sweden’s native Arkansas to perform in two of the most acoustically satisfying spaces Baker has ever encountered. “It was really, really fun,” he said.

For this program, the Singers will revisit three Sweeden works: Always Something Sings, Sunward, and his first gospel composition, We Are Held, which showcases Sweeden’s signature rhythmic vitality.

Samuel Barber’s choral Agnus Dei. Baker said that scholars have called Virga Jesse Bruckner’s finest choral work, praising its dramatic power and theological sweep: “the root of Jesse blossomed, a virgin gave birth to God and man. God restored peace and reconciled himself with the lowest to the highest.”

Barber’s Agnus Dei, the choral adaptation of his beloved Adagio for Strings, continues the meditation on peace: “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, grant us peace.” Hearing these two works in conversation should be one of the afternoon’s most moving experiences.

Sean Sweeden

Anton Bruckner

Samuel Barber

The Lawrence Civic Choir will bring a vibrant and varied set of their own. Their program includes Christians Be Joyful from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Sarah Hopkins’s atmospheric Past Life Melodies, Ryan Turner’s love song Jenny and Ysaye Barnwell’s beloved Wanting Memories, with its tender refrain: “Used to rock me in the cradle of your arms and you said you’d hold me till the pains of life were gone.”

The Lawrence Civic Choir

The combined choirs will close the concert with three pieces. Steven Eubank, Artistic Director of the Lawrence Civic Choir, will conduct two of them, including William Mathias’s jubilant Let All the People Praise Thee, famously performed at the wedding of Charles and Diana.

They will also present Every Heart in Harmony, written by Kansas City composer and organist Dr. Geoffrey Wilcken in honor of the Lawrence Civic Choir’s 50th anniversary. Baker spoke warmly of Wilcken, calling him “a fabulous organist” and a vital collaborator across multiple Summer Singers ensembles.

The finale will be Robert Ray’s gospel classic He Never Failed Me Yet, conducted by Baker—a piece the Festival Singers have recorded “four or five times” and one that never fails to ignite an audience.

Steven Eubank

Geoffrey Wilcken

Reflecting on the year, Baker spoke with pride about his singers: “I have never worked with a group of people that were as kind, that were as hardworking, that were as talented, that were as egoless… no man walks the face of this earth more blessed than I.”

It is because of Baker‘s respect for his choir that he continually pushes them to ever greater achievement. Next season promises more ambition. Following last year’s triumphant B Minor Mass by Bach, the Festival Singers will take on the composer’s St. John Passion. Baker described it as a compact but formidable masterpiece: “All the difficulty of the St. Matthew Passion that is spread over three hours is compacted into an hour and a half with the St. John.”

But before that monumental undertaking begins, Kansas City has one more chance to hear the Festival Singers at home—surrounded by friends and joined by new partners, singing the music that has shaped their identity across 28 remarkable seasons.