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JUNE 18-JULY 23
It is time again to get out the Listerine and dust off the scores for some great choral classics. This Tuesday the annual “Washington Summer Sings” series kicks off its sing-along sessions in a new location at Western Presbyterian Church with the New Dominion Chorale. Until this year the series was held at Riverside Baptist Church, and until three years ago the Paul Hill Chorale always sponsored it. NDC music director Thomas Beveridge (pictured), realizing that Washington is considered “the Choral Capitol of the World,” hopes most people will find the new downtown location more convenient. In these “sudden death” performances, all interested singers are invited to join NDC without any rehearsal and sing under the guidance of Washington’s best choral conductors with piano accompaniment. A different work will be performed every Tuesday for the next six weeks. On the first program, Beveridge will conduct Brahms’ Requiem. The following week, Washington Bach Consort director J. Reilly Lewis will lead a work by his favorite composer, A Mass in B minor. Following that is a piece Beveridge calls “the most dramatic oratorio ever written,” Mendelssohn’s Elijah, which NDC performed superlatively at its season finale last month. Asaph Chorus director Dean Christman conducts. Mozart’s Requiem will follow, guided by Tom Hall, and a week later is Haydn’s The Creation, with Paul Hill Chorale associate director Sondra Proctor overseeing. The series concludes with Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance captained by occasional Washington Opera conductor Cal Stewart Kellogg. At 7:30 p.m. at Western Presbyterian Church, 2401 Virginia Ave. NW. $6. (202) 232-7594. (Mark Longaker)