History
Randall Thompson conducts a combined chorus including HCS in the 1959 premiere of Frostiana.
The Early Years
The Hampshire Choral Society was founded in 1953 by members of the Northampton-Amherst Chorus, an ad hoc group of singers assembled to help the Springfield Symphony with a performance of the Berlioz Requiem. Since our founding, we have had eight directors and thousands of members. We have performed throughout the Pioneer Valley and toured Romania and England.
We created the Young People’s Chorus, a choir for elementary to high-school aged children, in 1999 under the leadership of then-director Elizabeth Hart Damon. The award-winning chorus, directed by K.C. Conlan, and Hampshire Choral Society often present a joint concert in the fall, singing together as one chorus to conclude the program.
We were privileged to present the North American premiere of A Cambridge Mass by Ralph Vaughan Williams in January 2012. Conductor Alan Tongue collaborated with Mr. Taylor by long-distance phone and email conversations to prepare the chorus and orchestra. Nearly 1,000 people were in the audience as Mr. Tongue conducted the chorus and symphony. In May 2012, we performed an equally exciting and well-received concert in collaboration with the Pioneer Valley Symphony and Chorus. Allan Taylor conducted the orchestra and joint choruses in the beautiful, moving Missa in Tempore Belli by Haydn. PVS’s Paul Phillips conducted the choruses in the challenging and rousing Belshazzar’s Feast by William Walton, to enthusiastic acclaim.
Recent Highlights
In May 2016, we once again presented the spectacular Ein Deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms to an audience of over 600. As then-musical director Allan Taylor noted, “His achingly beautiful music is immediately appealing, yet it rewards continued study and repeated hearings.” A familiar favorite, Hampshire Choral Society has sung this master work every ten years since 1986 and we hope to perform it again in 2026.
In celebration of Allan Taylor’s retirement from twenty years as director of the Hampshire Choral Society, the choir sang Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, “Little Solemn Mass,” which is neither brief nor particularly solemn. The June 2023 performance also included the premiere of Hope, composed by Clifton Noble in honor of Taylor. Noble set one of Taylor’s favorite poems as its text.
Our first concert with Paige Graham, titled Sing Praises, featured Mozart’s Vesperae solennes de Confessore with additional works by Gabriel Faure, Nathaniel Dett, Ralph Vaughn Williams and Randall Thompson. The concert repertoire celebrated justice, mercy and gratitude and the timeless power of the music challenged singers and audience members alike to discover or remember something beautiful about our shared human experience.