About the Choir
The City Choir of Washington is a member-driven choral community that is as committed to the music it performs as to the city it serves. It presents moving and thoughtfully curated musical events throughout the Washington, DC metro area to uplift and inspire audiences and singers alike.
City Choir, now entering its eighteenth season, is a diverse group of over 140 all-volunteer singers from across the greater Washington region. Singers range in age from 21 to 87; some are native to the District, while others hail from throughout North America, South America, Europe, and Asia—all are bound together by a passion for choral music. The City Choir of Washington seeks to create spaces where singers and audience can focus on the shared experience of music over external divisions, and where joy can be found in collaborative artistic expression, small accomplishments, and large triumphs.
In summer 2022, the City Choir of Washington concluded fifteen seasons under the artistic leadership of GRAMMY-winning conductor Robert Shafer and welcomed Artistic Director Erin Freeman.
Artistic Director Erin Freeman is equally at home conducting chorus and orchestra, and City Choir’s 2024-25 season features the Washington National Opera Orchestra in two concerts. The choir’s creative approach to classic works will be on display with a unique multi-dimensional production of Haydn’s Creation (in Philip Moody’s new English translation), and City Choir continues to nurture emerging talent by engaging Wolf Trap Opera studio artist alumni as soloists (this season in a fabulous 150th anniversary celebration of Bizet’s Carmen and select opera choruses and scenes). Other highlights of 2024-25 include a tribute to 100 Years of American Song, and Beethoven’s Mass in C Major, paired with Bach’s first great cantata, BWV 4, and motets by French Romantic composer Mélanie Bonis. The season will be capped off with a tour to Brazil in June 2025, where City Choir will perform as guests of São Paulo’s Mozarteum Brasileiro, and present a cappella programs in Rio de Janeiro.
The City Choir of Washington’s engagement ensemble, the City Singers, under the direction of Assistant Conductor Kathleen Jagielski, brings programs of holiday music, spirituals, pop tunes, and American classics to audiences at assisted living facilities, military retirement communities, medical facilities, and homeless shelters. Other community engagement programs include the continuation of City Choir’s work with the National Symphony Orchestra’s Sound Health Initiative, Artistic Director Erin Freeman’s clinics with DC-area music educators, and singing the national anthem at Washington Nationals baseball games.
Notable past performances include appearances at the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, where the choir sang Carmina Burana (2023) with the Richmond Ballet and Richmond Symphony Orchestra & Chorus and the Lord of the Rings soundtrack (2008-2013); rarely heard gems such as Bach’s Magnificat in E-flat and Elgar’s The Music Makers; grand works including Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor and Rossini’s Petite Messe Solonnelle; and Maestro Shafer’s valedictory Brahms Requiem at Washington National Cathedral in June 2022, dedicated to the people of Ukraine and introduced by Her Excellency Oksana Markarova, the Ukrainian Ambassador.