About Us: The Chorale

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Mission: The Back Bay Chorale celebrates the unifying power of music by performing choral masterworks with a passionate commitment to excellence.  Through artistry and innovation, the Chorale seeks to be a premier vocal ensemble that presents a rich and varied repertoire, collaborates with acclaimed and emerging musicians, and reaches out to new audiences to expand our community.  The Chorale will be a dynamic contributor to Boston’s constellation of performing arts.

The Back Bay Chorale is a one-hundred-twenty-member auditioned chorus led by Music Director Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, drawing experienced singers from the greater Boston area. From its inception, the Chorale has committed to sharing music in the community with repertoire that ranges from Renaissance to contemporary in an annual concert series. The Chorale celebrated its thirty-fifth anniversary in May 2009 with a performance of Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem and the world premiere of Julian Wachner’s Come My Dark Eyed One at Sanders Theatre at Harvard University.  Other highlights of recent seasons include Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Mass in B Minor, Verdi’s Requiem, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and Handel’s Israel in Egypt.

Musician, minister, and social activist Larry Hill founded the Back Bay Chorale in 1973 at Boston’s Church of the Covenant to create a musical ministry that would bring meaning to both singers and their audience. In the years since Hill’s death in 1989, the Chorale has continued to grow in stature and is now regarded as one of Boston’s premier nonprofessional choruses. Under music directors Larry Hill, Beverly Taylor, Julian Wachner, James Olesen, and, since 2004, Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett, the Chorale has presented numerous concerts and has had the privilege to perform with many of Boston’s finest orchestral players and internationally recognized soloists. In recent years, the Chorale has performed regularly at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre, Emmanuel Church, and Boston University’s Marsh Chapel.

The Back Bay Chorale has supported the growth of emerging singers through its Artist in Residence program and has commissioned and premiered many works, including Marjorie Merryman's Three Ballads, James Russell Smith's Canto V: The Second Circle, Robert Kyr's Unseen Rain and Passion According to Four Evangelists, Stephen Paulus's Voices, Daniel Thomas Davis’s King David’s Songbook, and Julian Wachner’s Symphony No. 1: Incantations and Lamentations and Come My Dark Eyed One. The Chorale has also brought lesser-known works to Boston audiences, including Gerald Finzi’s Requiem da Camera and Ildebrando Pizzetti’s Requiem.

Participation in community activities is a vital aspect of the Back Bay Chorale’s mission. The chorale has provided concert tickets to students and senior citizens who otherwise would have been unable to attend a live performance. Chorale members participate annually in the Walk for Music and volunteer regularly as a group in WGBH pledge drives. The chorale also took part in the concert “Lux Aeterna: Choral Responses to the Tsunami Disaster” in January 2005. This event, which had been organized in two weeks, included over 14 choral ensembles within greater Boston that came together in a benefit for Oxfam America. Each group performed individually, then as a one large ensemble to sing Edward Elgar’s Lux Aeterna under the direction of Scott Allen Jarrett. The concert raised over $13,000 to aid victims of the disaster.

The chorale’s discography includes recordings of Gunther Schuller’s performance of John Knowles Paine's St. Peter Oratorio; James Yannatos conducting his Trinity Mass with conductor emerita Beverly Taylor, the Harvard Glee Club, the Radcliffe Choral Society, the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra; and Beverly Taylor conducting Robert Kyr's Unseen Rain and Passion. More recent  recordings are Julian Wachner conducting Benjamin Britten's Company of Heaven and Lukas Foss's Griffelkin with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project under the baton of Gil Rose.