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Convergence

Come to the Woods

Voices of Earth

CAE Yuletide 2025

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Illuminare

Mirrored Voices

Frank Martin’s Messe pour double chœur a cappella

Giovanni Croce’s Buccinate in neomenia tuba

CAE Pops! The Great American Songbook

It’s Only a Paper Moon

Moonglow

CAE Yuletide: Gloria

Carol of the Bells/Shchedryk

Snow Angel

I Believe

I Will Sing of Life by Adolphus Hailstork

A Vision Unfolding by Derrick Skye

Northwest Voices

This Is Nothing But Thy Love, Composed by Patrick Vu

Czernogorsk Fugue, Composed by Tomáš Svoboda

Beethoven Mass in C Major

I. Kyrie

II. Gloria

Yuletide from the Pacific Northwest

Angels We Have Heard on High

Morten Lauridsen’s Mid-Winter Songs, Mvt 4: Mid-Winter Waking

Annelies: The Voice of Anne Frank

We opened our 2023-2024 season with a world by James Whitbourn called Annelies, which drew its inspiration and most of its text from the world-famous diary of Anne Frank (1929-1945).

Mvmt IV: The Last Night at Home and Arrival at the Annexe

Annelies – Mvmt X: Devastation of the Outside World

April 2023 Season Finale

Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem Op. 48

We closed our 54th season with one of the most moving and beloved works of choral music ever written – Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem. Fauré’s contemplative setting will be especially poignant in the beautiful and acoustically-rich confines of St. Philip Neri in SE Portland.

alleluia (from quarantine)

This piece, performed on April 30, 2023, is alleluia (from quarantine), by Joshua Shank. It offers a striking contrast to the serene simplicity of the Cantique. Instead of four gracefully overlapping but distinct vocal parts, Shank refracts the choir’s sound like light through a prism, with sometimes over a dozen vocal lines happening at once. Instead of carefully crafted rhymes, Shank’s text consists of a single word in different moods. He has said that the word alleluia expresses varied emotions, including “gratitude…but also the growth that can come from sadness and grief over things we’ve lost.”

CAE Pops! Celebrates 10 Years

These performances, from March 5, 2023, were from our 10th-anniversary CAE Pops! concert series, celebrating a look back at some of the best moments throughout the years of this popular concert series.

Unclouded Day from “Three American Songs”

The three hymns in Heavenly Home, arranged by Shawn Kirchner (b. 1970), sound almost like folksongs, but in fact they all had composers and lyricists. The focus on Heaven as our true home, where we will reunite with lost or distant family, reflects a longing born of the frequent isolation and loneliness of rural and frontier life. Rev. J.K. Alwood (1828-1909), a circuit-riding United Brethren pastor, wrote both the words and music for “Unclouded Day” in 1879.

Nearer, My God, To Thee

Two English sisters created the first version of “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” Sarah Flower Adams (1805-1848) wrote the familiar words in 1841, and her sister, Eliza, composed the first setting, but American Lowell Mason (1792-1872), music educator and composer of hundreds of hymns, wrote the music for our version. This striking arrangement sets the original text against a chant in Latin about God raising us even in the moment of death. It comes to us via BYU Vocal Point, the nine-member male a cappella group at Brigham Young University.

A World Anew – October 2022

Choral Arts Ensemble of Portland opened our 54th season in 2022 with the extraordinary music of internationally-renowned composer — and Portland’s own — Sydney Guillaume. With many texts written by his father, Sydney Guillaume’s compositions promote human values and are full of heart and passion. These performances were from Sunday, October 16, 2022.

C’est Beau La Vie

This, Too, Shall Pass

Nou Se Limyé