DESSOFF’S HISTORY

The Dessoff Choirs is celebrating its centennial in its 2024-25 season with programs that reflect our rich history as well as move us forward into the next 100 years with new collaborations and commissions. Formed in 1924 by Margarete Dessoff, Dessoff has contributed to the choral arts in innumerable ways. Over the course of the 100 years of its existence, Dessoff has presented numerous world and US premieres, introduced the music of renaissance composers previously unknown to U. S. audiences, performed with the great orchestras of the world, built up an online presence with “Dessoff Dialogues” during the COVID shutdown of live performances, championed the music of Black composers, and provided a stage for musicians and soloists of color.

Since Dessoff welcomed its ninth music director, Malcolm J. Merriweather in May 2016, we have extended our mission to include giving voice to new or neglected choral works and composers, expanding the audience for the great choral classics, and giving musicians and composers of color their well-deserved place in the spotlight. During Merriweather’s tenure to date, Dessoff has released, to great acclaim, two CDs of music by Margaret Bonds: The Ballad of the Brown King and Selected Songs and Bonds’s Credo and Simon Bore the Cross. In addition, we’ve expanded our educational mission to include an Assistant Conductor fellowship program.

Dessoff is partnering with Trinity Church in a production of Verdi’s Requiem in May 2025, as part of our 100th anniversary season. We were also honored to have been invited to return to the New York Philharmonic in its November 2023 concert of Gustav Holst’s The Planets. In addition, Dessoff has partnered with the Abyssinian Baptist Church Cathedral Choir in a performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah. In recent years, Dessoff was pleased to collaborate with Roomful of Teeth, on Eve Beglarian’s None More Than You, commissioned for the Whitman Bicentennial celebration. It was released on their most recent CD, Rough Magic in 2024. In addition, Dessoff was part of a virtual performance made under the auspices of The New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts. In November 2018, Dessoff appeared in the “Concert for World Peace” dedicated to Japanese-Turkish friendship, composed and conducted by Seiji Mukaiyama. Also that year, Dessoff singers and conductor Malcolm J. Merriweather were participants in Lincoln Center’s 2018 Mostly Mozart Festival’s world premiere of John Luther Adams’s In the Name of the Earth. Another recent collaboration was the world premiere of Ittai Shapira’s The Ethics commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Theresienstadt concentration camp, at Zankel Hall in May 2015.

Dessoff has been a leader in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, practicing the principles embodied in the phrase as "the fair treatment and full participation of all people", particularly groups "who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination". When founded in 1924, Margarete Dessoff was unique in that women were not considered as conductors of orchestras or choral groups in major concert halls; in the 1980’s & 90’s, Amy Kaiser led Dessoff and was among a very few women conductors in that period; and now Maestro Merriweather, the only African American symphonic choral conductor in New York City leads Dessoff and has showcased Black composers, soloists and musicians.

Under the innovative leadership of Christopher Shepard (music director from 2010 to 2016) Dessoff organized a series of themed music festivals led by choral concerts featuring the Dessoff Choirs and surrounded by events such as lectures, meet-the-artist opportunities, instrumental concerts, and community participation sing-ins.

James Bagwell, music director from 2005 to 2010, presented several programs of music by living composers, including the New York premiere of Transcendental Sonnets by Kyle Gann and the world premiere of Talk, written for The Dessoff Choirs by Harold Farberman. In November 2009, Dessoff released a second CD, Glories on Glories, a live recording of American song ranging from Billings to Ives. Also in 2009, Dessoff was honored to participate in Lorin Maazel's seven farewell concerts as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, which included three performances of Britten’s War Requiem and four of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8.

With Kent Tritle, music director from 1996 to 2004, Dessoff’s 1999 recording of four American contemporary works, Reflections, exemplified the group’s mission. Paul Moravec’s Songs of Love and War was premiered by Dessoff that season and recorded alongside Robert Convery’s chamber work To the One of Fictive Music, Ned Rorem’s From an Unknown Past, and a re-orchestrated Fern Hill by John Corigliano. This CD earned the group the 1999 ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming. He followed Amy Kaiser, who in her twelve years with the chorus (1983-1995) guided Dessoff's repertoire with the commissioning and premiering of new choral works and the discovery of music, especially from non-Western traditions, that had not yet become part of the canon of choral singing.

Early History:

Margarete Dessoff, founder and music director of The Dessoff Choirs from 1924 to 1936, arrived in New York City for a visit shortly after the First World War, from Frankfurt Germany where she had lived with her father, Otto Dessoff, a composer and conductor of the Frankfurt Opera. Fortunately for American lovers of fine music, Madame Dessoff remained in New York instead of returning to Europe. Her American reputation was established through her Madrigal Chorus of the Institute of Musical Art when she and Angela Diller (of the Diller-Quaile School of Music) formed the Adesdi chorus of women’s voices in 1924, named from parts of each founder’s name.

In October 1929, she formed the A Cappella Singers of New York, a mixed chorus, which began rehearsing in the evenings (the Adesdi women rehearsed during the day). The Dessoff Chorus, therefore, referred to two separate groups, constituting what is now known as The Dessoff Choirs, Inc. Today, the plural name connotes the several groups that perform regularly: a core ensemble of around 60; the larger Dessoff Symphonic Choir for orchestra engagements; and the Dessoff Chamber Choir for more intimate works and venues.

While it may be inconceivable to music lovers of today that there could be anything avant garde about the music of Machaut, Lassus, Josquin des Prez, Victoria, Schütz, and Monteverdi, the music of these giants was virtually unknown in the 1930s, not only to the amateur musician but to the professional. Nevertheless, Madame Dessoff was conducting concerts of music by these early composers during that time.

Paul Boepple, conductor of The Dessoff Choirs from 1932 to 1968, continued the work Madame Dessoff began by editing and publishing a collection of Renaissance pieces, still little known, of Palestrina, Dufay, and Josquin des Pres, to name a few of the composers Dessoff helped introduce to Americans. The publication of 48 editions in the Dessoff Choir Series and the release of 13 records grew Dessoff’s reputation throughout the country. Under Maestro Boepple, Dessoff also premiered works by Arthur Honegger, Frank Martin, and George Perle.  Following Boepple's retirement, Thomas Sokol led the Choirs for five years. He was succeeded by Michael Hammond, who led Dessoff in memorable performances of works by 20th-century composers including Schoenberg and Stravinsky, plus the world premiere of George Perle’s Songs of Praise and Lamentation. At the same time he maintained Dessoff’s tradition of giving stirring performances of earlier music.

MUSIC DIRECTORS OF THE DESSOFF CHOIRS

2016 – present: Malcolm J. Merriweather

2010 – 2016: Christopher Shepard

2005 – 2010: James Bagwell

1996 – 2004: Kent Tritle

1983 – 1995: Amy Kaiser

1973 – 1983: Michael Hammond

1968 – 1972: Thomas Sokol

1936 – 1968: Paul Boepple

1924 – 1936: Margarete Dessoff