Four joyous seasonal classics will make your holidays perfect. The Chorale’s classical Christmas concert includes Respighi's Laud to the Nativity, John Rutter's Gloria, Daniel Pinkham's Christmas Cantata, and Morten Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium. Laud to the Nativity transforms the 62 Chorale singers into a chorus of angels, while Gloria bursts with brass-laden fanfares from the orchestra. The rhythmically propulsive Christmas Cantata, one of Pinkham's most often-performed works, captures the vibrant energy of this dynamic season. A fitting close to this festive evening is the a cappella motet O Magnum Mysterium, one of the world's most popular choral works, written for and performed by one of the world's greatest choral ensembles. Rejoice!

Did you know that a LA Master Chorale board member commissioned this work in honor of his wife for their wedding? Read more about the romantic history.

Morten Lauridsen’s close association with the Los Angeles Master Chorale began in 1985 with a performance of his Mid-Winter Songs on Poems by Robert Graves at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion conducted by Roger Wagner. Wagner’s successor, John Currie, led a subsequent performance of this choral cycle by the Chorale in 1990. Following the 1994 premiere of his setting of O Magnum Mysterium, commissioned for the chorus by Marshall Rutter in honor of his wife, Terry Knowles, Lauridsen was appointed Composer-in-Residence of the Chorale, and the rest is history. Mr. Lauridsen stepped down from that position in 2001 upon the retirement of Paul Salamunovich but continues on the Chorale's Artistic Advisory Committee.

Morten Lauridsen was named an “American Choral Master” by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2005 and this past November received from the President at a White House ceremony America’s highest award in the arts, the National Medal of Arts “for his composition of radiant choral works combining musical beauty, power, and spiritual depth.”