The Dessoff Choirs Presents Bach’s B Minor Mass on April 18 in Harlem

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Mallory McFarland | Morahan Arts and Media
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The Dessoff Choirs Presents 
Bach’s B Minor Mass

Final Concert of the Season Held on April 18 at Mother AME Zion Church

“Full-bodied sound and suppleness” –The New York Times

www.dessoff.org

March 4, 2026 (New York, NY) – The Dessoff Choirs – led by Music Director Malcolm J. Merriweather – presents its last concert of the season, Bach’s B Minor Mass, complete with a full period orchestra and soloists, on Saturday, April 18, 2026, at 4:00 p.m. at Mother AME Zion Church in Harlem.

The performance marks several converging milestones: Merriweather’s tenth anniversary with The Dessoff Choirs coincides with his tenth year on the faculty of Brooklyn College. This dual occasion will be reflected in the inclusion of current Brooklyn College Conservatory students, alumni, and former Dessoff Choirs assistant conductors among the soloists and ensemble.

Malcolm J. Merriweather shares, “Sung by soloists who have stood alongside this ensemble over the years, this performance feels less like a concert and more of a homecoming through shared artistry – including Melissa Attebury, Director of Music at Trinity Church Wall Street, whose mezzo-soprano solos in Mozart’s Requiem marked my very first concert with Dessoff at Alice Tully Hall. These artists have helped shape this chapter from its very first notes.”

In addition, the concert serves as a culminating event in the centennial celebrations of Mother AME Zion Church’s current building, bringing together generations of artists and history in a space that has long stood at the heart of Harlem’s cultural life. “Bach’s Mass in B Minor is the perfect way to cap this extraordinary ten-year journey with The Dessoff Choirs,” a representative from Mother AME Zion Church remarked. “With a chorus of 80 singers and an orchestra of Baroque instruments, Bach’s music will resound in what was once called the 'Carnegie Hall of Harlem.’”

The Mass, considered a cornerstone of Western music, is the perfect prism through which to view Bach’s compositional genius. No one knows why this Lutheran composer ever chose to compose a Catholic mass in the first place, and why, once composed, it was never performed in its entirety (and its final form) until several decades after Bach’s death. Perhaps the most convincing reason is that Bach compiled the B Minor Mass to stand as a catalog of all the musical styles known at that time, from the earliest Gregorian chants to the newly fashionable style “galant.” In creating a work that has come to be regarded as the apex of human artistic expression, Bach also left a musical catalog for future generations.

Founded in 1924 by Margarete Dessoff, The Dessoff Choirs has been a fixture in the New York classical music scene for the past 100 years. Known for introducing unknown, long-forgotten, or newly composed works to American audiences, Dessoff’s nine music directors have expanded upon Margarete’s legacy, each in their own way. Malcolm J. Merriweather, Dessoff’s current music director, has used this podium to reintroduce the works of Black women composers, including Margaret Bonds, Florence Price, and Valerie Capers, along with commissioning new works. Dessoff continues to pay tribute to the past with works performed under Margarete Dessoff’s baton as the ensemble sustains the “high quality and thoughtful programming that have characterized the ensemble for a century and continue under Mr. Merriweather’s exceptional leadership” (Blogcritics). 

Program Information:
Bach: B Minor Mass
Saturday, April 18, 2026 at 4:00 at p.m.
Mother AME Zion Church | 140 W 137th St | New York, NY 10030
Link: https://www.dessoff.org/events/b-minor-mass 

Program:
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: B Minor Mass

Artists:
The Dessoff Choirs & Orchestra
Malcolm J. Merriweather, conductor
Katie Hyun, concertmaster
Vianca Alejandra, soprano
Melissa Attebury, mezzo soprano
George Baolin, bass
Patrice Pates Eaton, mezzo soprano
Jiyu Kim, soprano
Albert Lee, tenor
Nadine Lee, soprano
Mara Montez, soprano
Nicole Osmolovskya, soprano

About The Dessoff Choirs
The Dessoff Choirs, one of the leading choruses in New York City, is an independent chorus with an established reputation for pioneering performances of choral works from the Renaissance era through the 21st century. Founded in 1924 by Margarete Dessoff, the chorus celebrated its centennial during the 2024-25 season with programs that reflected music from its rich history and moved us forward into the next 100 years with new collaborations and commissions. 

The ‘s’ in Choirs connotes the group’s various incarnations – from Dessoff’s core group of 50 singers, to the Symphonic Choir assembled for larger engagements, and Chamber Choir selected to present more intimate works. Since its founding in 1924, Dessoff’s mission is to enrich the lives of its audiences and members by giving voice to new or rarely heard, forgotten music and composers, and to bring great choral works to New York audiences in new ways. Dessoff concerts, professional collaborations, community outreach, and educational initiatives are dedicated to stimulating public interest in and appreciation of choral music as an art form that enhances the culture and life of these times.

With repertoire ranging over a wide variety of eras and styles, Dessoff’s musical acumen and flexibility has been recognized with invitations from major orchestras for oratorios and orchestral works. Last season included a well-received Brahms’ Requiem at Town Hall, Florence Price’s Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight, and a performance of Verdi’s Requiem in partnership with Trinity Church, which included the premiere of It’s a Journey by Tania León, commissioned by Dessoff to honor its centennial. Other past performances include Britten’s War Requiem and Mahler’s Symphony No.8 with Lorin Maazel in his final performances as Music Director with the New York Philharmonic. Over the course of its near-100-year history, Dessoff has presented many world premieres, including works by Virgil Thomson, George Perle, Paul Moravec, and Ricky Ian Gordon; the first American performance in nearly 100 years of Montemezzi’s opera La Nave with Teatro Grattacielo; and the American premieres of Philip Glass’s Symphony No.5 and John Tavener’s all-night vigil, The Veil of the Temple.

Dessoff's world-premiere recording of Margaret Bonds's Credo and Simon Bore the Cross was released in February 2023 and received rave reviews. WRTI wrote that “Margaret Bonds: Credo, Simon Bore the Cross brings new luster, and the utmost care of execution. Under the baton of Malcolm J. Merriweather, The Dessoff Choirs has a profound simpatico with Bonds’ mature compositional style...” We are also featured on a new album from Roomful of Teeth, Rough Magic, in a recently commissioned Eve Beglarian work, None More Than You.

Other recent discography includes Margaret Bonds: The Ballad of the Brown King & Selected Songs, a debut recording of Margaret Bonds’s crowning achievement, which was cited as a “Best Classical Recording of 2019” by WQXR-FM Radio; Reflections, featuring music by Convery, Corigliano, Moravec, and Rorem; and Glories on Glories, a collection of American song featuring composers from Billings to Ives.

The Dessoff Choirs is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Learn more at www.dessoff.org.

About Malcolm J. Merriweather
GRAMMY-nominated conductor Malcolm J. Merriweather is Director of the New York Philharmonic Chorus and Music Director of New York City’s The Dessoff Choirs and Orchestra. He is Professor and the Tania León Endowed Chair of Music at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

Renowned as an interpreter of symphonic choral masterworks, Merriweather has led major performances of Bach’s St. John Passion, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and Handel’s Messiah, and is recognized internationally for his advocacy of Margaret Bonds, with world premiere recordings of The Ballad of the Brown King, Credo, and Simon Bore the Cross (AVIE Records). He has guest-conducted ensembles including the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Novus Orchestra, and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.

The 2025–2026 season features four world premieres: David Lang’s The Wealth of Nations and Ellen Reid’s Earth Between Oceans with the New York Philharmonic Chorus, Mark Campbell and Peter Boyer’s A Hundred Years On with The Philadelphia Orchestra and The Crossing, and the title role in Frederick with Music Worcester. In celebration of his tenth season with The Dessoff Choirs, Merriweather conducts Howells’s Requiem, Hailstork’s The World Called, Bach’s Mass in B Minor with period orchestra, a reprise of Tania León’s It’s a journey, and appears twice with Andrea Bocelli at Madison Square Garden.

Recent highlights include opening the 2024–2025 season at Disney Concert Hall with music of Mary Lou Williams for Solange Knowles’s Glory to Glory: A Revival of Devotional Art; conducting Brahms’s Requiem at Town Hall for The Dessoff Choirs’ centennial with Will Liverman and Joélle Harvey; leading the Buffalo Philharmonic in Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell’s Sanctuary Road and Margaret Bonds’s Montgomery Variations; culminating the Dessoff centennial with Verdi’s Requiem at Trinity Church with Angela Meade, J’Nai Bridges, Won Whi Choi, and Kevin Short; and preparing the Caramoor Festival Chorus for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Other recent highlights include the world premiere of Handel: Made in America at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, staged performances of Craig Hella Johnson’s Considering Matthew Shepard with Trinity Wall Street, and preparing the New York Philharmonic Chorus for Jaap van Zweden in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for the reopening of David Geffen Hall. In China, he prepared the Philharmonic Chorus for the world premiere of Émigré with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.

Merriweather has also conducted at Jones Hall, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Disney Concert Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Westminster Abbey, and the Vatican before Pope Francis. He served as founding Artistic Director of Voices of Haiti, a children’s choir established by the Andrea Bocelli Foundation in Port-au-Prince and was previously on the music staff at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Dr. Merriweather earned degrees from Eastman, Manhattan School of Music, and Syracuse University, and was a fellow at Tanglewood. Connect with him on social media @maestroweather and at malcolmjmerriweather.com.

Photo at top of release by Fadi Kheir

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