For the sixth year in a row, legendary tenor Andrea Bocelli will take the stage at Madison Square Garden. The two back-to-back performances will take place on Wednesday, December 18 and Thursday, December 19, 2019. As one of the most recognizable and romantic voices in the world, Andrea Bocelli has been thrilling audiences for over 20 years, and has sold 90 million records worldwide. In 2016, he was nominated for three Latin Grammy Awards including Album of the Year and received a 2017 Grammy Award nomination for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for “Cinema.” Bocelli will perform his unmatched repertoire of soaring arias, famed love songs, and music from his newest release, and Billboard chart-topping record, ‘Si’.” This year, Bocelli’s tour and the Andrea Bocelli Foundation are proud to partner with PLUS1, an innovative platform that aims to drive social change and catalyze cultural momentum toward equity, dignity, and access for all. For every ticket sold, $1 will go to support the “Voices of Haiti” Project, giving children from the most vulnerable areas of Port Au Prince the chance to escape violence and poverty and express their true potential.

December 20 and 21 at 7:30pm. December 22 at 3pm. Messiah and Trinity have a long history—Trinity presented one of the first performances in North America in 1770, and The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and Trinity Baroque Orchestra are still widely regarded as some of the greatest interpreters of the work. The New York Times described Trinity’s presentation as “perhaps the essential New York ‘Messiah.’ With the church’s choir and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Mr. Wachner provides gritty, gutsy, edge-of-the-seat performances.” Ticketed For the full Messiah schedule visit trinitywallstreet.org/messiah

Last time Dashon Burton performed with MISH was in 2012 when he was a soloist in our very first performance of Messiah.  As a permanent memorial of that epic performance, he left behind the YouTube recording of “The trumpet shall sound” – still MISH’s most-viewed video.  He returns to the Somerset Hills on Saturday, January 4 as a front-rank international singer.  His distinctive bass-baritone voice, described by the Wall Street Journal as an “enormous, thrilling voice seemingly capable …… raising the dead”, is in demand in opera houses and concert halls everywhere.  His recordings include Songs of Struggle and Redemption: We Shall Overcome, described by the New York Times as “profoundly moving ….. a beautiful and loveable disc”.  He returns to MISH immediately following his Christmas performances of Messiah with the New York Philharmonic.

Downtown Voices; NOVUS NY; Stephen Sands, conductor Brahms – Geistliches Lied Beethoven – Mass in C In celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birthday, Downtown Voices and NOVUS NY perform his tranquil yet dramatic Mass in C in addition to Brahms’ earliest accompanied choral works, Geistliches Lied.

Executive Director and Founding Tenor of Antioch   Antioch teams up with student composers and the Princeton University Chamber Singers to present a concert at Richardson Auditorium.

Kinnara is widely recognized as one of the nation’s most talented vocal ensembles.  Directed by J.D Burnett of the University of Georgia (formerly conductor of the New Jersey Youth Chorus and the Masterworks Chorus of New Jersey), Kinnara brings together many of the finest young professional singers in the South and the East.  On Saturday, March 21, making their first visit to the Somerset Hills, they will present a program of music that either inspired Bach or was inspired by Bach – music by Monteverdi, Schutz, J.S. Bach himself, Brahms and Distler …. amongst others.

Stephen Sands and Donald Dumpson team up with their choirs from NYC and Philadelphia for a concert in each city celebrating the diversity of song. Details TBA

If you visit Symphony Hall in Boston you cannot fail to notice that above the main stage is a trim intended to contain a number of plaques, each dedicated to the memory of a great composer.  When the hall was opened in 1900 only the central plaque had a name on it – Beethoven’s – because he was the only composer whose popularity the founders were certain would endure. To this day, the other plaques remain blank.  Our tribute to music’s greatest genius on Saturday, April 25 features the Central Jersey Symphony Orchestra and the Somerset Hills Chorus, and is built around what is almost certainly Beethoven’s most famous work – the Ninth (or Choral) Symphony, which ends with Schiller’s Ode to Joy, a passionate salute to the Age of Enlightenment.  Beethoven, virtually stone deaf, conducted the first performance, though a second conductor, discreetly placed, was the one from whom the singers and musicians took their time.  The two female soloists (18-year-old Henrietta Sontag and 20-year-old Caroline Unger) would both go on to have great careers.

Les Plaisirs de Versailles was written by Marc-Antoine Charpentier as a divertissement for King Louis XIV and the French court in 1682.  It is an extremely silly story (the librettist is wisely anonymous), but nonetheless entirely recognizable to 21st-century audiences.  Two ladies – Music and Conversation – are having a ding-dong argument because Music has been interrupted by Conversation’s babbling (sounds familiar?).  Various people try to appease the two ladies, and the quarrel is eventually settled over chocolate!  TENET is a group of immensely talented singers, directed by Jolle Greenleaf, who are particularly renowned for their innovative programming and virtuosic singing.  In this performance, they will be accompanied by the magnificent Ensemble Caprice, a group of musicians based in Montreal whose mission is “to put new life into baroque music” – luxury casting for the rediscovery of a musical pearl from the Baroque World.

Three days of concerts, large and small, to celebrate the start of Summer in the Somerset Hills.