William Baker, DMA, Music Director and Conductor
Christine Freeman, Associate Music Director, Senior Vocal Coach
O. Wayne Smith, DMA, Organist and Accompanist
“The best of the several amateur choruses in the city.” -The Kansas City Star
“Simply superb…This choir was prepared to professional standards, technically and musically.”
-KC Metropolis
CLICK HERE: For a 2012-13 Season Audition Packet
The William Baker Festival Singers of Kansas City is a 50-voice semi-professional chorus specializing in sacred a cappella classics and
spirituals, in addition to masterworks for chorus and chamber orchestra. The ensemble is based in metro-Kansas City and continues the Festival Singers tradition begun in Atlanta in 1985. The membership of the WBFS-Kansas City is comprised of some of the finest professional and amateur singers in the Heartland region. Singers travel from Topeka, Kansas on the west and Garden City, Missouri on the east to be a part of the William Baker Festival Singers.
In their first fourteen seasons, the Festival Singers has performed challenging and diverse a cappella classics from Renaissance to Contemporary, and has delighted audiences across the region with their authentic renditions of American folk music, African-American spirituals, and gospel songs. The Festival Singers has given tour performances from New Orleans to Des Moines to Atlanta. The choir has produced several nationally-marketed recordings and appeared in numerous radio and television programs.
The annual performance of choral/orchestral masterpieces by the William Baker Festival Singers is a highlight of the concert season in Kansas City. Recent concerts have included the first performances in decades by Kansas City-based ensembles of the Bach: St. Matthew Passion in 2007, and the Mass in B minor in 2009. Other renowned concerts have included Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, Bernstein: Missa Brevis and Chichester Psalms, Kodaly’s Laudes Organi, and the Requiems of Durufle, Rutter and Mozart. In 2012 the Festival Singers presented the first performance of Ernest Bloch’s Avodath Hakodesh in Kansas City in over 30 years. The performance was broadcast in its entirety on Kansas Public Radio.
The 2012-2013 Fifteenth Anniversary Season will include signature events such as the Season Opening Concert in November, Candlelight, Carols, and Cathedral in December and performances throughout the Kansas City region. Additional highlights will include an April 11, 2013 performance of the Requiem of Maurice Durufle with members of the Kansas City Symphony in Helzberg Hall of the Kaufmann Center for the Performing Arts followed by a concert tour of New York and New Jersey with performances in Miller Chapel of the Princeton Theological Seminary and the Trinity Wall Street Church in New York City.
View our featured videos on You Tube:
CLOUDBURST
THE HEART WORSHIPS
CHRISTUS FACTUS EST PRO NOBIS
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