Current subscribers may now renew for the 2008-2009 season!

New subscriptions will be available beginning June 3rd.

Thirty years of sharing extraordinarily beautiful choral masterpieces with appreciative audiences is something to be celebrated heartily and in style.

What better work to kick off the season than the monumental and unsurpassed Requiem of Brahms, filled with words and music that speak comfort and consolation? While we have always performed this work in German, we are doing it in English translation to be certain that its remarkable message is clearly heard, understood and felt by all who sing or listen.

The season continues with the thrilling sounds of the chorus and the Ars Viva brass in our annual Christmas program, a holiday tradition for hundreds of CMS audience members.

We conclude the season with an exquisitely beautiful mass setting by Schubert, a masterpiece that has been on my wish list for all of my 20 years as Music Director. Coupled with the mass is Lauridsen’s magically reflective Lux Aeterna, a work that breathes in the same ethereal atmosphere CMS audiences have come to love in his motets, O Magnum Mysterium and Ave Maria.

Only our subscribers can be assured of excellent seats for all three programs, including the frequently sold-out Christmas concerts. I look forward to sharing this great music.

 — Alan Heatherington

Alan Heatherington has built his career in the Chicago Metropolitan area as a choral and orchestral conductor, a violinist/concertmaster, and an educator. So distinguished are his accomplishments that the Chicago Tribune recently named him a “Chicagoan of the Year for 2004." The Illinois Council of Orchestras has awarded him the title of Conductor of the Year for 2005. Read more...