Roy E. Disney Center for the Performing Arts

Choral Music in New Mexico: Enchanting Voices

From concert hall to stage to cathedral, choral music in New Mexico is a thriving art form.  A number of choirs in the state perform regular concerts.  The internationally renowned Santa Fe Desert Chorale is a professional chamber choir that presents a local summer festival season.  Also in Santa Fe are the Santa Fe Women’s Ensemble and the Men’s Camerata, the Sangre de Cristo Chorale and Canticum Novum chamber chorus.

In Albuquerque, the University of New Mexico Choirs, some of the largest choirs in the state, give concerts during the school year.  Chamber ensembles Polyphony: Voices of New Mexico and de Profundis are perennial favorites, as are the Albuquerque Boy Choir and its newer counterpart, the Albuquerque Girl Choir.  Albuquerque is also the center of the state’s vibrant barbershop tradition, with two chapters of the Barbershop Harmony Society – The Duke City Sound and the New MexiChords, as well as the young men’s chorus, The 505.

The state is also home to the New Mexico Gay Men’s Chorus, and a number of church choirs that present concerts outside of ordinary services.  Eastern New Mexico University and New Mexico State University also offer performances by their university choirs in Portales and Las Cruces, respectively.  The Santa Fe Symphony and the New Mexico Symphony have attached symphony choruses.

New Mexico is a regular touring destination for professional choirs, and it is often possible to hear choral music presented in the cathedrals, chapels and historic mission churches around the state: a uniquely New Mexican experience.