The Dessoff Choirs: Whitman Bicentennial Festival

The final concert of the season, on the 200th anniversary of his birth, features several commissioned choral works that use the poetry of Walt Whitman. The concert begins with settings of Whitman’s poetry by twentieth century American composers Howard Hanson and Gregg Smith. Along with reprises of two Dessoff commissions from earlier in the season, the second half of the concert will offer two world premieres – a commissioned work by Eve Beglarian and Mathew Aucoin’s commissioned choral excerpts from his critically acclaimed opera, Crossing.