After a 4-year hiatus, the CONCORA Summer Festival returns, with a particularly exciting set of repertoire. The theme of the concert is THE PHOENIX RISES. The music of the concert remembers heart-wrenching events of the twentieth century but offers a message of hope for unity and reconciliation.

The anchor of the concert is the new 30-minute choral suite from Craig Hella Johnson's Considering Matthew Shepard, remembering the brutal murder of a young gay man in Wyoming. CONCORA performed the whole work with singers from UCONN to great acclaim in 2019. We also present the five spirituals from Michael Tippett's A Child of Our Time, which juxtaposes the injustice of slavery with the horrors of Kristallnacht, one of the earliest events leading to the Holocaust. Two recent works complete the program, each bearing the message of future change: Hope, by Debra Scroggins and I Dreamed of Rain by Jan Garrett.​

We are also offering workshops again this year, which proved very popular in recent years:

• Monday, July 24 - 6:00 pm - Broadway Workshop with Mark Mummert.
• Wednesday, July 26 - 6:00 pm – Conductors’ Workshop with Chris Shepard
• Friday, July 28 - 6:00 pm - Vocal Health with Patricia Doyle, MA, CCC-SLP

Registration: $300  ($275 by June 23); $100 Student.

Concert is on Saturday, July 29 at 3 pm.