Masterworks Choir

A Concert of Hope for Our Time

Remembering Richard and Lucy Thomas

Join the Choir and Orchestra as they present

Requiem for the Living (Dan Forrest)

Choral Fantasy (Beethoven)

featuring Dr. Benjamin Woods, Piano

Sunday, May 18, 2025

5:00 pm

FMU Performing Arts Center

FREE ADMISSION

Our 46th season concludes with a performance of Requiem for the Living, by South Carolina composer Dan Forrest. A Requiem is a prayer for rest, traditionally for the deceased. This five-movement work, however, forms a narrative just as much for the living, and their own struggle with pain and sorrow, as for the dead. This powerful, moving piece ranks as Forrest’s most beloved composition. The second half of the program highlights Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy featuring Dr. Benjamin Woods as piano soloist. Written and premiered in 1808 with the composer himself as soloist, the Fantasy is a brilliant work for piano, orchestra, and chorus, and is clearly a precursor to his famous Ninth Symphony. Join us at the FMU Performing Arts Center for this exciting spring concert to close out the season.

The Masterworks Choirs

present

Folk Songs from Around the World

Sunday, March 9, 2025

4:00 pm

Central United Methodist Church

Folk songs have been passed down through the oral tradition in families and communities for generations.  Folk songs are our identity.  They are a vital expression of a community's culture, reflecting the experiences, beliefs, and emotions of a people through stories and melodies, with the ability to evolve and adapt over time as they are shared and reinterpreted across generations.  This unique concert will highlight folk songs from around the world and will feature both the Masterworks Choir and the Masterworks Children's Choir performing works from Brazil, Mexico, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, Ghana, Indonesia, Germany, Scotland and, of course, America.

Concert Underwriter - McLeod Health

Admission is Free

Our annual Christmas concerts feature a work composed in 2020 during the height of the pandemic when no choirs were performing. The Magnificat by Taylor Scott Davis is a gorgeous five-movement setting of the “Song of Mary” written for chorus, soprano solo, and orchestra. This work will open the concert and will be directed by Masterworks Assistant Conductor Kevin McCormick. Following the Magnificat, you will enjoy a set of Christmas carols that will be both familiar and new. We hope to see you at one of these performances – it’s a Christmas tradition!

Magnificat (Taylor Scott Davis) & Christmas Favorites – Old and New! at Central United Methodist Church