Houston Chamber Choir

Described by Peter Phillips at “one of this country’s leading ensembles,” the Houston Chamber Choir was founded in 1995 by Artistic Director Robert Simpson and is the 2018 winner of Chorus America’s Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence. Previous awards include the American Prize, Professional Choir Division in 2015. The choir has appeared in Mexico City with Orquestra del Nuevo Mundo and traveled to Wales where it won honors at the International Choral Festival in Llangollen. The Houston Chamber Choir has performed at national conventions of the American Choral Directors Association, national conferences for Chorus America, The Association of Anglican Musicians, the Association of Lutheran Musicians, and the Texas Choral Directors Association. In April 2012, the Chamber Choir made its New York City debut at Trinity Church Wall Street and presented a concert and masterclass at Yale University. In June 2016, they performed for the American Guild of Organists during their national convention in Houston.

At home as “one of the jewels of the city’s cultural scene” (Houston Chronicle), the Chamber Choir has brought Houston audiences an array of choral masterpieces, including the city’s first period instrument performance of Bach’s B-minor Mass and the rarely-heard Third Sacred Concert by Duke Ellington. It has commissioned works from leading composers, including The Healing of the Sun by Christian McBride, The Blue Estuaries by David Ashley White, A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass by Dominick DiOrio, and Messages to Myself by Christopher Theofanidis which it premiered at Lift Every Voice and Sing – An American Masterpieces Choral Festival hosted by the Chamber Choir and sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. The choir’s recording of 19th- and 20th-century Russian secular choral music, Ravishingly Russian, was greeted with glowing reviews “Ravishing is right” (Gramophone) and “The singing is top-of-the-line” (American Record Guide). The Houston Chamber Choir released its third commercial CD, soft blink of amber light, on the MSR label in September 2015, featuring commissions and premieres by some of the nation’s leading composers. David Alteena of Fanfare Magazine raved that, “This release is an unabashed winner on every count, and deserves to be part of your music collection; urgently recommended.” The choir’s 2015 collaboration with Grammy Award-winning artist Kim Kashkashian, Da Camera, and percussionist Steven Schick resulted in the release of Rothko Chapel Morton Feldman, Erik Satie, John Cage on the ECM label, produced by Grammy Award-winner Judith Sherman. Most recently, the Chamber Choir recorded the complete choral works of Maurice Duruflé in June 2017 in the Edythe Bates Old Recital Hall and Grand Organ at Rice University with organist Ken Cowan. It is slated to be released in late spring, 2019.