FRONT COVER : Kenneth Schermerhorn, the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra onstage at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall following their performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, the “Resurrection,” on 7
BACK COVER : Ken-David Masur leading the chorus and orchestra in a performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana on 9 June 2024.
In preparing this book for publication, I’ve spent the last several months working through the archival records of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, which were compiled and maintained by its membership for decades. What has been evident to me from the very beginning — and what appears to have remained a consistent fact over the 50 years that have passed since the ensemble’s formal inception — is the sense of devotion these singers have shown both to their craft and to each other. Letters to the chorus from its foundress, Margaret Hawkins, memories from choristers, press clippings, interviews, newsletters, and more have repeatedly demonstrated the true sense of comradery and musical discipline which have distinguished the chorus as a crown jewel of Milwaukee’s cultural life.
The historical narrative presented here would not have been possible to write were it not for the diligent efforts and compassionate motivations of the people who have worked to preserve it. I owe a great debt to the chorus’s former historians, Judith Berndt, Judy Green, Caryl Gurski, Mark Hanson, Christine Krueger, James Kuist, and chorus librarians Phil and Sue Talmage, whose meticulous attention to the details of their own past helped to realize its telling. Darwin Sanders, the language and diction coach for the chorus, shared wonderfully illuminating details of his time working with Lukas Foss and Margaret Hawkins, and former chorus director Lee Erickson graciously clarified aspects of the chorus’s career during his tenure. For her enthusiasm and unwavering commitment to the sustained success of the chorus, I extend every gratitude to Dr. Cheryl Frazes Hill, and I give my sincere thanks to Christina Williams, whose tireless dedication and good cheer have made the ensemble’s work possible year after year.
While it was not possible to recount in detail her extraordinary contributions to the artistic well-being of her city, I feel a profound sense of gratitude for Margaret Hawkins. She was, in the words of her singers, a “force of nature,” and the thousands of words written about her in the press, the loving recollections by her singers, and her own accounts of the way things happened bespeak a love for life and unbounded passion for the human voice which continue to move the thousands of listeners who attend performances at the Bradley Symphony Center every season. Her loving, painstakingly diligent, larger-than-life attitude toward working in the performing arts — what she called “a beautiful trauma” — serves as a touching example for anyone seeking the courage to live the artist’s life.
It is my hope that this document serves as a faithful and accurate account of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus’s rich and storied history. Beyond the words that tell their story, only the music can suffice.
David Jensen
Publications
Manager
Fall 2025
I extend my personal thanks to you for joining us during the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s 2025-26 season. The time we spend together in Allen-Bradley Hall is defined, and realized, by looking to the past and the future simultaneously: both the recollection of our artistic legacy and the drive toward making exceptional music make what we do onstage night after night possible. As we approach the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, the voices of our choristers — your neighbors, friends, and fellow citizens — will sing out in celebration of this remarkable milestone, exploring the great masterworks of the choral repertoire under the baton of a leader whose enthusiasm for our chorus, our orchestra, and our community has defined his work in Milwaukee.
The music we’ll enjoy together in the coming months reflects Music Director Ken-David Masur’s thoughtful approach to programming and his heartfelt appreciation for the human voice — qualities which have nurtured our chorus and underscored their prominence in the city’s musical landscape. Founded by Margaret Hawkins, one of the most distinguished vocal pedagogues of her generation, at the invitation of Kenneth Schermerhorn, the MSO’s second music director, the ensemble has been an indispensable element of the orchestra’s rise to fame and sustained success. Since their debut in Uihlein Hall in June 1976, the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus has enjoyed acclaim as one of the nation’s preeminent choral treasures, and under the continued stewardship of chorus directors Lee Erickson and Cheryl Frazes Hill, their voices have opened the door to a greater depth of musical expression for 50 years, sharing words of comfort, hope, joy, and exaltation with an unrivaled passion.
They’ve sung on some of the world’s most prestigious stages, from New York’s Carnegie Hall to Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, committed their voices to record in a wide variety of repertoire, performed a cappella concerts to sold-out audiences, earned glowing reviews in the press, and given world premieres by living composers — and they have done so for decades purely for their unbridled love for the music. The countless hours of voice lessons, auditioning, practicing, rehearsing, and concertizing, given selflessly in service of their craft, should inspire all of us to consider how we might devote ourselves to making the world a more beautiful and worthwhile place to live.
On behalf of the orchestra, the chorus, and our extended MSO community, I invite you to savor every moment of your time in the audience. As we honor the people who tread the path before us and laid the foundations of our present success, I am reminded of just how vital music is to living a meaningful life and what a gift it is to be able to share it with all of you.
Mark Niehaus President and Executive Director
Michael and Jeanne Schmitz Chair
The following document, addressed to members of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus and held in the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s archives, was prepared by the first director of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, Margaret Hawkins, on 20 February 1989.
Beginnings aren’t always clear. Many have said that the beginning of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus was Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust at the end of the MSO’s 197576 season. In truth, the history of our chorus goes back much further to the spring of 1964! At that time, I was teaching high school choral music at Pewaukee High School. Milton Rush, then conductor of the Waukesha Symphony and the Music for Youth Orchestra, came to a performance of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas that the kids were doing, complete with fake harpsichord created with thumbtacks shoved into the hammers of an old upright. John Weissrock was at the dubious keyboard.
The result of that concert was that Milton Rush asked me to succeed Don Mohr (father of former MSC-er David Mohr) as conductor of the Music for Youth Chorus. Thus began a long story which cannot be recounted in detail here. Meanwhile, I was still plugging it out in Pewaukee and loving every minute of “Making Them Sing In The Sixties When They’d Rather Be Doing God Knows What.” This double life (MFY and PHS) went on for some time. The next event in the evolution of the MSC came along one day when Kenneth Schermerhorn heard the PHS Chamber Singers at a concert of new music in Vogel Hall sponsored by the Conservatory, which had a composer-in-residence named Barney Childs, whose music we were doing. This, I think, was in 1970 or 1969. (The Music for Youth Chorus, by then, was in its death
throes due to a lot of circumstances which are still unclear today.) In its infancy was a chorus called The Conservatory Singers, which was adopted by the famous violist Gerald Stanick, then administrative head of the ‘Toire, as we called it even then.
Schermerhorn, after hearing the PHS bunch, introduced himself to me and said something like, “Have you got any adult choruses?” I said, thinking of The Conservatory Singers, whose average age was about 18 due to the recent identity with Music for Youth, “Sure.” That began the grand collaboration which lasted for about four years, during which I would combine the forces of The Conservatory Singers, the Bel Canto Chorus, the Lutheran A Cappella Chorus, and the Sullivan Ensemble for various performances of wonderful works like Mahler’s eighth, Britten’s War Requiem, and Schoenberg’s Guerre-Lieder. They were great years, but very difficult. It soon became clear that we needed a permanent chorus of 200 or so voices, as Schermerhorn’s choral needs were interfering with the seasons of the collaborating choruses.
So it began. Meetings. Arguments. Money, money, money. Fear of the chorus unionizing. Finally, as I remember it, a wonderful smiling man called Bob Jones came to be the president of the board of directors of the MSO, and essentially said, “Why not?” He and the board and Schermerhorn, together with the MSO’s fine management, worked out a plan in which the expenses of this new chorus would be shared by the MSO and the Conservatory. The idea was to have a big audition in which we would gain 100 new singers to add to The Conservatory Singers. Ha! I have never been so unsure of anything in my life. With all the choruses in town, it was highly unlikely that we could find 100 more in one set of auditions in the middle of the season!
We were banking on several things: The name of the orchestra. Schermerhorn’s popularity. The hope that we had attracted some singers during the collaborative years. Perhaps because it was such a frightening crapshoot for me (I had resigned from PHS to become a part-time teacher at the Conservatory, a part-time lecturer at the Layton School of Art, and a contract-by-contract chorus master for the MSO — no money, no benefits, etc.) I have forgotten the details of those auditions. But at the end of them, we had our 100 new singers! They became the Monday nighters, and The Conservatory Singers remained on Tuesdays and did double duty for the orchestra and for the Conservatory. Thus was born the Wisconsin Conservatory Symphony Chorus. It was 1976.
We became the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus when the Conservatory abandoned its “college division” and that faculty. In one fell swoop, I lost most of my salary, the co-sponsorship of the chorus, and my career as a teacher. It was very possible that I would have lost you, too.
I was in Saranac Lake, New York, when the news about the Conservatory dropping its degree programs came. I’ll never forget it. We were doing a conductors’ workshop, and we were all crowded into Roger Wagner’s hotel room, dishing about the choral
world. Everybody was there — [Margaret] Hillis, [Robert] Page, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts chorus panel, and many other luminaries. The phone rang, I heard the news, and sat there in shock as the party got livelier.
The next day I had to be in Washington, D.C., and while there I called Bob Caulfield, then executive director of the MSO. I crossed every part of my body, including the hairs on my head, and asked him if there was any way that he and the board of directors would consider taking on the whole chorus, with all of its expenses, while still allowing us to retain the two-night format, and could he, please, also hire me fulltime. Again, I have to admit that the trauma of the situation has caused me to forget the details, but somehow, through the hard work of Gordon Zion, Bob Caulfield, Dick Thomas, and the MSO board, it was all worked out fairly quickly, and by the beginning of that season, the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus was born. It was 1984.
Through all of that, you sang and sang and sang. You rehearsed and performed, you went to Carnegie Hall twice. You did the Mahler second in Orchestra Hall for the national convention of the American Symphony Orchestra League in Chicago. You did a Mahler eighth or two at Ravinia with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, its chorus, and James Levine. You rehearsed Lehrstück during the World Series. You made a wonderful recording of 20th-century music that still sells. You raised money, you endured reauditions, you tolerated tons of verbal abuse, and you lined up like good little soldiers over and over again. You entered the world of the pops concert with a squawk. You did the Riverside, Bruce Hall, and finally the Marcus Amphitheater. You got rained on in New York, you broiled on the lakefront, and you endured long bus rides to exciting cities like Aurora and Rockford in the company of Mitch Miller. You created a staff of your own and a core of 16 underpaid singers. You ceased to be your basic amateur chorus and entered the world of professionalism by your own definition. But most importantly, you sang, and you sang well. You piled up reviews that are envied by choruses across the continent. By the pure persuasion of your performances, you won all the battles described earlier in this article. Among all the people who care about music, you are the pride of your city.
This is how I remember the evolution of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus. Obstacles overcome. And beautiful singing.
Margaret Hawkins 20 Februrary 1989
Above: Kenneth Schermerhorn, soprano Debra Hogan, baritone Glen Klotz, tenor Daniel Nelson, and the Wisconsin Conservatory Symphony Chorus in a performance of Schubert’s Mass No. 2 in G major in September 1978. Recorded live in Uihlein Hall, the performance was the first of the MSO’s to be broadcast on Chicago’s WFMT network and was later distributed to the BBC, receiving airtime in Great Britain and Western Europe in the early 1980s.
By the beginning of the 1970s, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra had reached an artistic impasse: on the one hand, its seemingly overnight rise to stardom was the richly deserved reward of untold hours of difficult work carried out by the musicians, board, and staff members who had devoted themselves to giving their city the worldclass symphony orchestra it deserved. On the other, there were still greater heights to reach, and the orchestra’s second music director, Kenneth Schermerhorn — whose charisma on the podium and drive for musical excellence had propelled the orchestra to the upper echelons of the American orchestral circuit — wanted more.
From its inception in 1959, the MSO had relied on a patchwork of local ensembles to mount productions of standard choral works like Beethoven’s ninth and Handel’s Messiah. The Bel Canto Chorus and the Florentine Opera had begun to hire the orchestra for their performances in the late 1960s, but with no resident chorus of its own, Schermerhorn’s aspirations for the fledgling orchestra were left deferred. As he expanded the MSO’s repertoire by delving into the large-scale Romantic literature that was defining the symphony’s sonic identity, it became clear that if the institution was to establish itself as a first-rank enterprise, he could not wait for a permanent solution.
By the early ’70s, Schermerhorn began to scout the city for choral talent, and as luck would have it, the answer to his problem was to be found in one woman who had been quietly earning a reputation as one of the region’s finest choral conductors — one who was teaching high school music in the suburbs just a few miles to the west of the newly opened Milwaukee County Performing Arts Center.
At Schermerhorn’s invitation, choral director Margaret Hawkins began preparing her chorus at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, in conjunction with a rotating cast of auxiliary groups, to fulfill Schermerhorn’s ambitions. The Conservatory Singers gave their first performance with the MSO singing Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms in February 1972, and over the course of the next four years, masterworks by Brahms, Schoenberg, Britten, and Mahler followed in short succession. But by 1976, the coordination of multiple choral forces had become untenable; with the joint collaboration of Hawkins, Schermerhorn, the MSO’s Board of Directors, and the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, a successful series of auditions recruited the 200 voices necessary to realize their vision, and the first rehearsal of the newly founded Wisconsin Conservatory Symphony Chorus was scheduled for 15 March 1976. Only three months separated them from their debut in Uihlein Hall singing Hector Berlioz’s notoriously difficult La damnation de Faust.
An audience of 2,100 crowded into the hall on 12 June 1976 to hear the fruits of their labor, and the consensus by the critics was unanimous: “The spanking new Wisconsin Conservatory Symphony Chorus came on the city’s music scene Sunday night with a French tigre [sic] by the tail,” wrote Lawrence Johnson in the Milwaukee Sentinel. “Already, the new choir credits its conductor, Margaret Hawkins, in its consistently balanced textures and refreshing attention to enunciation.” Louise Kenngott, writing in the Milwaukee Journal, observed that Hawkins “had done some great preparation. The sound was full and polished … the Milwaukee Symphony was great, ending its season with fireworks.”
The early seasons were marked by a diverse, adventurous repertoire and constant artistic development. Margaret Hillis, foundress of the Chicago Symphony Chorus and one of the most sought-after choral conductors of her day, mentored Hawkins (who had been a student of hers in a score analysis class) throughout those first years, and the two affectionately referred to each other as the “Margaret of the North” and the “Margaret of the South.” Known for her color-coded scores and no-nonsense approach to rehearsal, Hillis’s precise, highly detailed manner marked her conducting debut in Milwaukee in February 1977, leading the chorus in Haydn’s “Lord Nelson” mass and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. Writing in the Milwaukee Sentinel, Lawrence Johnson
observed that “the distance Margaret Hawkins has taken the symphony’s singers since that tentative start last June … is astonishing. … Clarity prevailed, and with it tremendous energy focused with laser directness. … Piling up color upon color, crescendo upon crescendo, [Hillis] pushed this elegantly sensual music to wondrous climaxes.”
Accolades continued to follow. A televised performance of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem graced the airwaves in June 1977 and prompted this question from the Sentinel: “If this youthful orchestra has been remarkable in its ascent, what shall we say about its prodigious chorus and the woman who has nurtured it to full bloom in two brief seasons?” Only a year later, the chorus finally broke through to the national stage: at the invitation of Ralph Black, the executive director of the American Symphony Orchestra League, their debut in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall during the league’s 33rd National Conference was met with instant acclaim. “In a decade with Schermerhorn, the Milwaukee orchestra has risen to a very high musical level,” Robert Marsh noted in the Chicago Sun-Times, “and the Wisconsin Conservatory [Symphony] Chorus, which appeared in the final movement, is a well-trained group of exceptional skill. … Mahler was well served.”
As the decade wound to a close, the landmark achievements came one after another. The MSO’s first recorded radio broadcast, featuring the chorus in a performance of Schubert’s Mass No. 2, was recorded live in Uihlein Hall in September 1978. The following February, Margaret Hawkins made her conducting debut with the MSO, leading her singers in Mozart’s “Great” Mass in C minor: “At last, the woman who has waved magic over the 200 voice chorus backstage was given a chance to run the whole show. She seized upon it to create a magnificent production — exemplary in style, impeccably constructed, full of life.” (Lawrence Johnson, Milwaukee Sentinel) A month later, Kenneth Schermerhorn led the male voices of the chorus in the North American premiere of Jean Sibelius’s Kullervo, a sprawling symphonic saga rooted in the mythology of Finland’s national epic, the Kalevala.
Riding the crest of a decade-long wave of musical success and institutional growth, Schermerhorn closed the 1978-79 season with a magisterial reading of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, delivering some of the finest performances of his career. “The Missa solemnis proved doubly fitting as a summation of Schermerhorn’s achievements with the Milwaukee Symphony: it also measured the phenomenal growth of the Wisconsin Conservatory Symphony Chorus, which he brought into being just three years ago,” read Lawrence Johnson’s review in the Milwaukee Sentinel. “There is simply no choral challenge to compare with Beethoven’s grand mass, and the 200 voices prepared by Margaret Hawkins delivered it with an artistically mature sound — accurate and forceful, expressive and articulate — worthy of any chorus in the world, without qualification.”
In January 1979, Kenneth Schermerhorn announced his intention to step down as music director. After spending more than a decade molding his musicians into a world-class ensemble, he began looking toward a future of composing, guest conducting, and change. His contract was extended for a single season as the MSO began its search for Schermerhorn’s successor to the podium — and in the span of that year, the chorus he had so carefully sculpted alongside Margaret Hawkins was poised for excellence on the world stage.
In the fall of 1979, the MSO began its preparations to perform alongside the chorus at Carnegie Hall the following spring for its sixth appearance at the venue. Donn Dresselhuys, then chairman of the MSO’s board, spoke to the Milwaukee Sentinel that October: “The chorus has already raised more than 60 percent of the cost of the trip through personal contributions alone. The chorus is making this magnificent effort as a tribute to its director, Margaret Hawkins, and with a sense of dedication, appreciation, and love for Kenneth Schermerhorn, now in his last year as music director of the symphony.” Christmas carol-alongs, post-concert craft and bake sales, and a benefit concert given by David Cornel, the pianist and language coach for the chorus, were among the member-led fundraising initiatives that made their New York debut a reality.
Wielding a “saber-rattling” all-Prokofiev program, the reviews that appeared in print in the days following their Carnegie Hall debut were effusive in their praise: “The Wisconsin Conservatory Symphony Chorus, prepared by Margaret Hawkins, sang lustily and with crisp discipline,” wrote Peter G. Davis in The New York Times. “The Milwaukee Symphony played magnificently in the Prokofiev Fifth Symphony,
and when it was joined by Margaret Hawkins’s Wisconsin Conservatory Symphony Chorus, the results not only raised the roof sonically, but sent the music soaring to one beautiful effect after another,” wrote Byron Belt in Newhouse Newspapers. In one glorious evening, the chorus had found recognition as one of the nation’s leading choral ensembles.
In September 1981, Lukas Foss led his first performances as the MSO’s third music director — and his first with the chorus — in Uihlein Hall. “The era of Lukas Foss opened Friday night with a shout of joy, first from a chorus of 200 and then from an audience of more than 2,000, as the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s new music director unfurled a majestic view of Beethoven’s ninth symphony,” wrote Lawrence Johnson in the Milwaukee Sentinel. Paired with Beethoven’s seldom-heard Wellington’s Victory, the concerts were a microcosm of the programming that would define the Foss era: foundational literature of the orchestral repertoire paired with little-known masterworks, as well as a greater proportion of contemporary and American music, would flavor his tenure.
The end of the 1982-83 season saw a succession of musical triumphs: during the last week of May, representatives from the ProArte record label joined Foss, the MSO, and the chorus for a three-day recording session that produced two records simultaneously. American Festival featured symphonic works by Bernstein, Copland, Cowell, and Barber, while the chorus committed their voices to tape for the very first time with their own album of three psalm settings by Stravinsky, Ives, and Foss himself. “Not by accident is the name of the Wisconsin Conservatory Symphony Chorus and its director, Margaret Hawkins, placed higher than the name of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and conductor Lukas Foss on the cover,” noted James Chute in the Milwaukee Journal following the record’s release. “This recording is a showcase for the chorus … From every aspect, this recording is of the highest quality.” Only days later, the MSO welcomed “the Dean of American Composers” to Milwaukee for a festival devoted to his music. Aaron Copland was in attendance for the four-day celebration of his contributions to the craft of American
music, including stagings of his ballet Appalachian Spring and his opera
The Second Hurricane. The chorus’s rendering of excerpts from Copland’s The Tender Land earned particularly warm reviews: music critic Jay Joslyn remarked that “The chorus’s fullthroated, clarion power pulsing with rhythm was contrasted with moments of moving serenity.”
Commemorating the MSO’s 25th anniversary season the following year, the chorus continued to make its mark on the Milwaukee music scene. In December, they sang their first popular holiday concert under the baton of Mitch Miller, a regular fixture of the MSO’s musical milieu since its earliest incarnation as the Milwaukee Pops Orchestra in the 1950s. “Never,” said Miller from the stage that weekend, “have I heard a better choir.” In April, they drew the landmark season to a close with their second appearance at Carnegie Hall in a performance of Mozart’s Mass in C minor. “One rarely has the opportunity to luxuriate in such sonic splendor,” Tim Page wrote in The New York Times, “and Mr. Foss built a performance of elemental intensity and power.” At the height of its success that season, the chorus was invited to the Ravinia Festival that June for their first appearance alongside the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under the direction of James Levine for a performance of Mahler’s eighth symphony, the “Symphony of a Thousand.”
In the autumn of 1985, the chorus began celebrating its 10th anniversary season under a new moniker: following a series of institutional transitions at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, the MSO had formally incorporated the chorus into its organizational structure, and the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus sang its first full subscription program with Hawkins leading Haydn’s oratorio The Creation from the podium. There was no want for inspiration in the choral literature for the hallmark season as rarely-performed works like Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw and Verdi’s Four Sacred Pieces resounded throughout the concert hall. In June 1986, Lukas Foss rounded out his career as music director with a performance of Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, the same piece that had earned the chorus their national stature at Carnegie Hall six years prior. In his final interview with the Milwaukee Sentinel, Foss was unambiguous in his evaluation: “Milwaukee has a few national treasures, and Margaret Hawkins is one.”
But the season finale was far from a farewell for Foss, who continued to guest conduct the orchestra well into the 1990s, and as a new decade approached, the
chorus showed no signs of slowing down. Foss returned that October to spearhead the Leonard Bernstein Festival alongside associate conductor JoAnn Falletta and newly appointed music director Zdeněk Mácal, with the chorus giving a reading of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms marked by “affecting warmth and vitality” (Milwaukee Sentinel). As Mácal took up the baton, the chorus enjoyed a weightier repertory, including Dvořák’s Stabat Mater (which Mácal personally dedicated “to the memory of the world’s people who have become victims of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome,” complete with pledge forms and return envelopes for the American Foundation for AIDS Research inserted into every program). The performances were hailed by Milwaukee music critic Tom Strini: “Nothing was superficial, imposed, or ornamental; every nuance in tempo and dynamic sprang directly from the harmonic and emotional necessities embedded deep in the score.” In July, the chorus returned to Ravinia for another performance of Mahler’s eighth with James Levine and the CSO, and one year later in the summer of 1988, the MSO, the MSC, and the Bel Canto Chorus came together to conclude Milwaukee’s annual German Fest with a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor at the Marcus Amphitheater. As the first all-classical concert in the venue’s history, the event drew an audience of 12,000, the largest in the orchestra’s history, and was repeated three more times in the following years.
And so the 1980s, an enormously productive chapter in the MSO’s history, culminated in yet another family affair in April 1989: in honor of both the orchestra’s 30th anniversary and Margaret Hawkins, the orchestra and chorus premiered Lukas Foss’s With Music Strong, a work commissioned by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra League, the orchestra’s corps of volunteers. A milestone in the chorus’s career, the work was recorded on the Koss Classics label only days later and made available for commercial release.
“Lukas Foss’s With Music Strong is a miracle of synthesis.
… From a few humble materials, he constructs a world of sound teeming with life.”
—Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal
“The world premiere of Lukas Foss’s With Music Strong … was one of those occasions in which the listener feels they’re participating in an event of nationwide and historical significance.”
—Nancy Miller Raabe, Milwaukee Sentinel
With Music Strong, to the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, is also called With Music Strong, Difficult, Wonderful, and Awesomely Unprecedented. Written as an extension of Lukas Foss’s Quintets for Orchestra, With Music Strong explores sounds and singing through the setting (for double chorus and orchestra) of phrases from eight poems by Walt Whitman. “I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused … sounds of the night … singing all the time, minding no time.” Colorful images such as these inspire some of the most inventive and exciting music ever written for chorus.
In the three sections of the piece (a jazzy introductory section in 5/4; an aleatory section in which the two choirs, the “choirs” of the orchestra, and the organ are given various fragments of music to emerge and submerge with on cue; and a glorious finale that celebrates singing — “Singing my days … years at whose wide-flung doors I sing. Give me to sing the songs of a great idea.”), the music is always exultant. Throughout, this work is not tonal. Nor is it atonal. The harmonic language is based on whole-tone scales (Debussy was fond of them) and the strong intervals of an augmented fourth and
the major ninth. As difficult as this is for the born-and-bred-in-the-majorand-minor chorus, the audience will be unaware of anything harmonically uncomfortable, as the illusion of tonality is always — well, almost always — there. Such is the genius of Maestro Foss’s work.
Most intriguing is the aleatory segment that comprises the centerpiece of With Music Strong. Here the performers move from one eight-measure fragment to the next, audibly and inaudibly according to various cues from the conductor. The conductor chooses the fragments, combining them, fusing them, and exposing them much as a painter chooses colors from the hues on his palette. The choices, and therefore the resulting “colors,” will be different at every performance — indeed, at every rehearsal!
It is difficult to describe the experience of coming to terms with a piece of music that has never existed before, that was written for me and our chorus, that has no history, no helpful recordings, and no people who know it to give me guidance. As with all the other works I have prepared for Foss, I know that he relies on me to have ideas about the music, to find its essence for the chorus. So I consult him very little. Instead, rehearsals are joyful hours of discovery and challenge. Every rehearsal reveals more ideas, more techniques, and more wondrous examples of word-painting. We find things that choruses have never in history been required to do, such as Chorus I singing in 5/4 against Chorus II’s 4/4. There are things so difficult that I almost feel Lukas in the room grinning devilishly at me. Then there are other things that seem like great gifts of choral genius, bestowed upon by a composer who knows us very well, who was perhaps hearing us as he wrote!
With Music Strong taxes our non-mathematical brains, our old-fashioned diatonic ears, and our lamentable urge for rhythm to be regular. But once these challenges have been met, this music is ultimately and gloriously singable. Our great delight (and this has been true since the very first reading) is that Lukas Foss not only knows what the human voice can do, but also what it loves to do!
And that is the greatest tribute of all.
Margaret Hawkins
Above: The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performing Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky under the baton of Zdeněk Mácal at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall in their first public appearance at the venue on 28 October 1990.
“If the city of Milwaukee pushed its resident symphony orchestra the way it promotes its Brewers, a lot more Chicagoans would be aware of what a fine ensemble the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra has become.” John von Rhein’s assessment of Milwaukee’s musical development appeared in the Chicago Tribune following the chorus’s soldout appearance at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall in October 1990 — the first such performance by the MSO in 12 years and the orchestra’s first public appearance at the venue. “On Sunday, the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus — several hundred voices strong — was back, fervently declaiming the choral sections of Prokofiev’s cantata, Alexander Nevsky. Their lusty, full-throated, expressive singing was a tribute to the fine choral organization founded by Margaret Hawkins.”
playbill publication, during the 1990-91 season.
Only a day later, the chorus returned to Uihlein Hall to commit their signature piece to record as part of the MSO’s ongoing collaboration with the Koss Classics label. “Foremost, as the quality that binds this performance into a compelling whole, is the unrivaled unanimity of tone, warmth of expression, and collective sense of presence and poise brought to bear on this affecting music by the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus,” wrote Milwaukee music critic Nancy Raabe following the record’s release. The
following summer, the chorus would bring the work to the Ravinia Festival to accompany a live screening of Eisenstein’s eponymous 1938 film led by Lawrence Foster. At the dawn of a new decade, their stature as one of the most illustrious choral ensembles in the country was without question.
The chorus gave its first a cappella performance at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in February 1992. Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil, one of the most profound expressions of faith to be found the choral repertoire, was heard in its original Church Slavonic — by Margaret Hawkins’s estimation — for the first time in Milwaukee, earning an “ardent standing ovation” before a sold-out house. Nancy Raabe of the Sentinel wrote that “One marveled at the consummate control of sudden and gradual dynamic contrasts, at the intricate expressive contour given individual words and musical phrases, and at the awesome dimension of the sonic terrain traversed, from glowing sopranos hovering on high to resonant basses plumbing subterranean depths.”
As part of the MSO’s composer-in-residence program, the chorus recorded Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra’s Idilio, included on an album of the composer’s music produced by the Koss label, in March 1992, marking the sixth entry by the chorus in the MSO’s catalog. In April, Kenneth Schermerhorn returned to Milwaukee for the first time in 12 years to lead the chorus and orchestra in a tribute to the masters of Viennese music in a program of popular works by Johann Strauss, Jr., Franz Schubert, and Franz Lehár. “With the aid of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus,” wrote Jay Joslyn in the Milwaukee Sentinel, “Schermerhorn exploded a colorful burst of humor, sentiment, and romance.” That summer, the chorus distinguished itself with not one, but two appearances at the Ravinia Festival: in June, the chorus gave their third performance of Mahler’s eighth for the opening concerts of Ravinia’s 57th season, and in August, they returned once more to sing the Ravinia premiere of Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio
And then, after more than 20 years, the impossible came to pass.
“History will record that Margaret Hawkins, founder and conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, died of cancer on November 13, 1993, at 2:10 p.m.,” read the notice in the Sentinel. “But thousands upon thousands of intelligent, sensible souls, none of whom necessarily believes in the supernatural, know that it just isn’t so.” Seven years after her first diagnosis, Hawkins had devoted her last days to art, to music, and to her chorus, the “great love affair of her life.” “Within those who have been touched by her perspicacity, her fierce dedication to the highest artistic principles, her abundant humanity, or her irresistible charm and irrepressible wit … Hawkins and what she lived for will continue to flourish as long as memory abides.”
More than 1,000 individuals came together for her memorial service just 10 days later. James Paul, former associate conductor of the MSO, Kenneth Schermerhorn, and Zdeněk Mácal each led the orchestra and chorus in selections by Elgar, Mozart, and Brahms; Lee Erickson, Hawkins’s right-hand man for more than 15 years, led the chorus in Rachmaninoff’s setting
Over 1,000 community members attended Margaret Hawkins’s memorial service in November 1993.
of “Ave Maria” and Bach’s chorale “O Jesulein süß, o Jesulein mild.” “Half of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus fought back tears and the other half sang through them,” wrote Tom Strini in the Journal, “but the tears did not prevent them from singing with the precision and passion that Margaret Hawkins instilled in them.”
Every performance that followed in Uihlein Hall that season was laden with emotion. The chorus’s first appearance with the MSO following Hawkins’s passing was the Midwest premiere of John Adams’s Harmonium led by resident conductor Neal Gittleman. In an essay included in the program for the weekend’s concerts, he noted that “Harmonium meant something a bit different to Margaret. … She wanted to show that her own chorus of lawyers, doctors, students, housewives, accountants, and teachers could handle the technical and emotional demands … Our performances of Harmonium will doubtless be an emotional roller coaster … we’ll do Margaret proud. And somewhere, Margaret will be smiling.” In March, the MSO gave its formal tribute to Hawkins, dedicating its performances of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem to her memory. “Acting chorus director Lee Erickson drew intense applause from both audience and chorus when he took his bows, and he deserved them,” Tom Strini noted in the Journal. “Loud or soft, in the forefront or in the background, the chorus sang gloriously and turned instantly at Zdeněk Mácal’s slightest gesture.”
At the close of the 1993-94 season, Lee Erickson was named Hawkins’s successor as director of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus. “In his years as Hawkins’s assistant, Erickson’s expertise was instrumental in shaping the 200-voice chorus’s luminous sound. That quality, combined with the ensemble’s strength, flexibility, and extraordinary attentiveness to diction, elevated it under Hawkins’s leadership to the foremost ranks of symphonic choruses nationwide” (Milwaukee Sentinel). Change was in the air: only a year later in June 1995, Mácal stepped down from the podium after eight years of conducting electricity. His final performances of Beethoven’s ninth that spring drew his tenure to a close with the sublime music that had accompanied the MSO’s momentous performances at the Marcus Amphitheater at the turn of the decade.
For two years following Mácal’s departure, Stanisław Skrowaczewski served the orchestra as artistic advisor as the search began for its fifth music director. In January 1996, Lukas Foss returned to Milwaukee for what would be his final performances with the MSO, dedicating his reading of Brahms’s German Requiem to Margaret Hawkins. That summer, the chorus revived Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky once again for a live screening in Uihlein Hall as part of the MSO’s Russian Festival. “The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Stanisław Skrowaczewski, brought it all to life with the help of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus … The orchestral sound was rich and dense, the vocal component ravishing. Musically as well as filmically, it was an event to cherish.” (James Auer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Above: Andreas Delfs leading soprano Maureen O’Flynn, baritone Nathan Gunn, and the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus in a performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No. 1, “A Sea Symphony,” in Uihlein Hall on 10 February 2006.
In conversation, Lee Erickson remembers his time working with Andreas Delfs as “the glory years.” In September 1997, Delfs made his debut as the MSO’s fifth music director, leading the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a concert arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov at the Basilica of St. Josaphat, a performance Erickson recalls as one of his favorite musical memories: “He had an ability to make stuff happen — that was just so wonderful for the singers. I’ll never forget that.”
Throughout the late 1990s, the chorus sang with greater frequency in some of Milwaukee’s most resplendent venues. Just a few months earlier, the chorus had given an a cappella concert devoted to works rooted in the musical language of Gregorian chant, including Duruflé’s Quatre Motets sur des thèmes grégoriens and Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy of St. John Chyrostom, at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. Coinciding with Delfs’s arrival was the appointment of Frank Almond as concertmaster, Doc Severinsen as the MSO’s first principal pops conductor, and a sweeping rejuvenation of Uihlein Hall’s acoustics, opening a thrilling new chapter in the MSO’s history and ushering in a renewed devotion to engaging with the greater Milwaukee community.
In November, the chorus sang its first concerts in the newly renovated hall, returning once more to the majesty of Beethoven’s ninth. “The sound has substance, presence, brilliance, depth,
nuance,” wrote music critic Tom Strini in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “The sound of Lee Erickson’s Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, in superb voice this night, jumped into the house.”
The following May, the chorus produced its first a cappella recording during a live performance at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, featuring works by Bruckner, Stravinsky, and Tavener, crowned by Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Chorus. A notice in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel following the record’s release in the spring of 2000 gave a warm review: “The chorus, one of Milwaukee’s cultural treasures, is in top form on this disc — beautifully tuned and balanced and palpably committed to the music.”
The 1998-99 season continued Delfs’s newly established tradition of staging pillars of the operatic repertoire on opening night. The MSO’s 40th anniversary season began with a reading of Puccini’s Turandot, earning “the longest, most intense standing ovation I have ever witnessed at a Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concert,” wrote Tom Strini. “The emotional impact was overwhelming.” That autumn, the chorus raised its voice in Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light, an oratorio conceived as a modern soundtrack for Carl Dreyer’s iconic 1928 film The Passion of Joan of Arc, with the composer in attendance for a live screening of the film.
Lee Erickson’s tenure was marked by the chorus’s involvement in the MSO’s community engagement efforts, a greater number of semistaged performances, and a repertory that ranged from the medieval to the modern.
In the fall of 1999, the chorus continued to amass honors as it honed its artistry under Erickson’s direction, opening the final season of the 20th century with selections from Wagner’s Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Die Walküre, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. “The Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, directed by Lee Erickson, is one of the city’s great cultural treasures,” read Strini’s review in the Journal Sentinel. “The chorus showed off its creamy legato, rich blend, bracingly clean articulation, and marvelously focused, well-tuned sound and earned an ovation to rival the soloists.” In October, the chorus inaugurated its novel “Voices in Great Spaces” series with an a cappella performance of music by Barber, Dupré, and Saint-Saëns at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, projecting a “rich, colorful, polished sound that easily filled the cathedral” (Elaine Schmidt, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).
The very first sounds of the new millennium to be heard in Uihlein Hall were the strains of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus singing Johannes Brahms’s intimate choral setting of Friedrich Schiller’s poem Nänie. Only weeks later, Helmuth Rilling, one of Germany’s most prominent choral conductors, made his Milwaukee debut in a performance of Haydn’s The Creation, a concert Erickson looks back on with a particular sense of pride: “I was taught that the thing the chorus had to be was flexible. When we rehearsed, there wasn’t just one way of doing
it. You could do this tempo, you could do that tempo, we could do this or do that, and you have to watch. It was always about watching. [Rilling] came in for the piano rehearsal, and he just did weird stuff with the piece. Usually they start out saying, ‘This is fine,’ and then make a few notes. But he was taking it fast. He was taking it slow. ‘Sing it loudly!’ And he did all of this stuff, and I thought, ‘this is really weird.’ But all the performances went fine, and on the evening of the Sunday performance, he said to me, ‘I just want to tell you that when I came here and saw that big chorus, I was ready to turn around and go home, because in my experience, whenever I’ve worked with one of those, it was just like pulling a barge. I want to say that your chorus was so flexible, so with me, so adaptable. In the first rehearsal, I was just seeing what I could do with them and what they would do! They passed every test. Congratulations.’”
Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the chorus premiered composer-in-residence Daniel Schnyder’s The Revelation of St. John in February 2001, a commission sponsored by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra League. Writing in the Shepherd Express, music critic Rick Walters noted that “[Delf’s] handling of the chorus was remarkably sensitive, coaxing beautiful phrasing and exactness from them. As a result of his leadership, the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus rose to a level that surpasses any work I’ve heard from them in the last several years.” That fall, the MSO opened its season with a semi-staged adaptation of Bizet’s Carmen, and in November, Lee Erickson conducted the chorus in the world premiere of Timothy Tikker’s Living Stones, a work commissioned by the Conventual Franciscan Friars of Saint Bonaventure Province in honor of the centennial of the Basilica of St. Josaphat.
The decade saw the chorus at its best: in November 2003, they would participate in the first modern English recording of Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera Hänsel und Gretel, which was released as a box set on Avie Records. At a reception celebrating Lee Erickson’s 10th season as chorus director the following March, guest conductor Nicholas McGegan’s appraisal of the ensemble was simple and clear-cut: “There are choruses that have a reputation, but they don’t all deliver. Let me tell you all in Milwaukee, you have a real gem here.” In April 2005, the chorus sang the world premiere of Gil Shohat’s Songs of Bathsheba, an oratorio based on the biblical story of Bathsheba and blending psalm texts with new poetry by Shin Shifra. They returned that summer to Ravinia for another rendition of Beethoven’s ninth, prompting Christoph Eschenbach, who conducted the performances, to judge the chorus as “world-class.”
That autumn, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra continued its legacy of artistic innovation: drawing on decades of performances at the Performing Arts Center, the MSO became the first American orchestra to offer its live recordings for download through iTunes, as well as launching its own online store and its own proprietary record label, MSO Classics. Among the
very first albums released that October were the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus’s performances of Brahms’s Schicksalslied and Triumphlied, putting the chorus on the digital map and breaking new ground in the information age.
For their place in the city’s cultural landscape as “an integral element of the quality of life in Milwaukee, enhancing the city’s reputation as a progressive, civilized place to live, work, and grow,” the chorus’s 30th anniversary was burnished with a mayoral proclamation from Mayor of Milwaukee Tom Barrett, declaring 13 May 2006 Milwaukee Symphony Chorus Day. After three decades of concertizing, recording, touring, and singing purely for their unconditional love of music, the chorus had cemented its status as “a compelling testament to the high standards of excellence set by Milwaukee’s arts organizations.”
Rounding out the first decade of the 21st century, the chorus released the world premiere recording of Roberto Sierra’s Missa Latina on the Naxos label, their ninth album, to critical acclaim: writing in Fanfare Magazine, Carson Cooman remarked that “This Naxos release with the Milwaukee Symphony and Andreas Delfs (great champions of Sierra’s music) makes a very strong case for this exciting work.” “If as a result of hearing a disc you wish to seek out more by the composer and performers involved, then surely the CD must be deemed a success,” wrote Nick Barnard for MusicWeb International. “So, by that measure, this is something of a treasure.”
Above: The Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, led by Ken-David Masur, singing choral selections from the operatic repertoire of Mozart, Wagner, and Verdi in Allen-Bradley Hall at the Bradley Symphony Center on 13 June 2025.
In June 2009, Andreas Delfs concluded the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s 50th anniversary season with his final concerts as music director. For the musicians, administrators, and community members who had spent half a century building a symphony orchestra of national renown, the moment had come full circle: singing alongside the Milwaukee Children’s Choir and the Master Singers of Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus joined the orchestra for its first performances of Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” with the MSO since 1973, when Margaret Hawkins’s Conservatory Singers were only one of the six vocal ensembles crowded onto the stage at Uihlein Hall to sing. “Everyone in the enormous cast, from Delfs down to the last kid in the choir, seemed intent on wringing every last drop of meaning out of every note, whether blazing or hushed,” noted Tom Strini in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “More than 400 performers merged in common purpose under his baton Friday, and their unity and unwavering intensity were palpable and a big part of a transcendent evening of music.”
The previous spring, Dutch conductor Edo de Waart had made his Milwaukee debut as the MSO’s music director designate, leading the orchestra and the women’s voices of the chorus in Gustav Holst’s The Planets and drawing a crowd of more than 9,000 listeners to Uihlein Hall that weekend. de Waart’s premiere marked the beginning of an exhilarating new era defined by an ever-loftier standard of music-making, with invitations from Carnegie Hall and national press coverage swiftly following the announcement of his appointment. In a profile on the conducting superstar in Milwaukee Magazine, Muna Shehadi Sill defined de Waart’s far-reaching influence with an anecdote from the chorus’s performance of Mahler’s “Resurrection” symphony in the spring of 2011: “The concert is a near-sellout, with a sense of excitement and energy that’s palpable throughout the theater. Silence from the rapt audience, no fidgeting, no dropped programs. Is anyone breathing? When the piece finishes with a loud flourish, the audience leaps
to its feet, giving yells, cheers and whistles that wouldn’t be out of place at Lambeau Field. Yet the more telling response comes in the breathless silence after the first movement, when the woman next to me produces an involuntary sigh and whispers blissfully to no one in particular: ‘Oh my.’”
Returning to the Ravinia Festival in the summer of 2011, the chorus sang two of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s little-known choral masterpieces, the Spring cantata and the choral symphony The Bells, under the direction of James Conlon, the premiere performances of each work at Ravinia. Writing for the Chicago Tribune, music critic John von Rhein praised the ensemble’s “hearty choral singing” — “Lee Erickson’s choristers rose with full-throated fervor to the more overtly dramatic pages of the presto, with its vivid depiction of inferno and ruin, and the finale, with its stark evocation of the empty silence of the tomb.” From 2014 to 2016, de Waart conducted the trio of operas comprising the Mozart-da Ponte cycle in fully staged performances at Uihlein Hall, leading members of the chorus in productions of Così fan tutte and Le nozze di Figaro. “There was spontaneity in this performance,” noted Rick Walters in the Shepherd Express: “The MSO’s Mozart productions have been major accomplishments of de Waart, a veteran opera conductor.”
In celebration of their 40th anniversary in the spring of 2016, the chorus revived Verdi’s colossal Messa da Requiem under the baton of guest conductor Asher Fisch. Writing for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Elaine Schmidt regarded the occasion as “a tour de force performance, from the opening whispered prayer for the souls of the dead to the furious, roaring ‘Dies Irae’ passages. Throughout the piece, whether delivering delicate, transparent sounds or searing forte passages, the chorus sang with discipline, control, and clear musical intent.” The performances were the last of Erickson’s career as director of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, and as he turned over the baton and left the stage at Uihlein Hall for the last time, the MSO stood on the cusp of its most radical changes to date.
Within the span of a few years, Milwaukee’s principal bastion of classical music would galvanize its standing as a major player among the nation’s greatest performing arts institutions. In December 2016, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra announced its intentions to purchase and restore the Warner Grand Theater in downtown Milwaukee with the view of establishing
the building as the organization’s primary residence. For more than 15 years, the MSO had been evaluating the former movie palace’s acoustic and economic potential, but the dream of securing its own proprietary venue had, time and again, remained just out of reach. Now with the backing of community support and the tireless efforts of the MSO’s administrative team and Board of Directors, the vision for the institution’s future crystallized into an imminent reality.
The following spring, Cheryl Frazes Hill was named the third director of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus. Appointed to the conducting staff of the Chicago Symphony Chorus in 1987 by Margaret Hillis — the very same woman whose fierce dedication to making world-class choral music had helped to root the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus in its enduring success — Frazes Hill’s decades of experience opened the door to an age devoted to the choral repertoire. With her designation came the close of de Waart’s tenure: in his last appearances as music director, the women of the chorus raised their voices with a “fresh, crisp sound” (Rick Walters, Shepherd Express) for earth-shattering performances of Mahler’s third symphony. “Some pieces illustrate the ache in humans for something higher, something poetically elevated from the prose of living. de Waart has been our guide to just that. He created an MSO that no one, including the musicians themselves, knew was possible.”
Dr. Cheryl Frazes Hill, the third director of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, taking a bow with music director Edo de Waart following a semistaged performance of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman in January 2019.
Only a year later, Ken-David Masur would make his mesmerizing Milwaukee debut, leading the chorus in performances of Ravel’s Suite No. 2 from Daphnis et Chloé. “This musically rich, beautifully crafted performance featured dazzling colors of orchestral and choral sound,” wrote Elaine Schmidt in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “The singers added the sort of timbre, color, texture, and visceral sound that only a large ensemble of disciplined singers can create, doing so with precision and musical conviction.” By November, the choice was clear: Masur was named the MSO’s seventh music director. Raised in the children’s chorus of Leipzig’s legendary Gewandhaus, Masur has since been lauded in his time in Milwaukee for his emphasis on the immediacy and grandeur of the human voice.
Emerging from the tumult of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bradley Symphony Center finally opened its doors to the public in the autumn of 2021. After nearly two years of finding community in digital spaces, meeting over video calls, and navigating uncertainty, the chorus made its Allen-Bradley Hall debut in December 2021 as part of the MSO’s annual Holiday Pops concerts and sang their very first Messiah in the breathtaking new hall. Before the close of the 2021-22 season, the chorus would give its first performance of the MSO’s Classics subscription series, appearing in a semi-staged production of Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt directed by Bill Barclay of Concert Theatre Works, as well as their first performance of Beethoven’s ninth in the new venue. “Thursday evening’s Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra performance, the first of a four-concert, season-closing weekend, served as a wonderful reminder of the cultural treasure Milwaukee has in the MSO and the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, as well as in the orchestra’s music director, Ken-David Masur, and the new Bradley Symphony Center in which the orchestra now performs. The orchestra and chorus … gave a musically rich, stirring
performance of Beethoven’s monumental Symphony No. 9 that put the fine acoustics of the orchestra’s new home to the test.” (Elaine Schmidt, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
The chorus was instrumental in the MSO’s first city-wide Bach Festival, seen here singing Bach’s Magnificat on 23 March 2024.
In only a matter of years, the collaboration between Masur and Frazes Hill has given choral music a true home in Milwaukee, giving rise to a wave of performances featuring masterworks of the vocal literature and shining the spotlight on the ensemble’s inimitable versatility and range. In the spring of 2023, the chorus sang Mendelssohn’s exquisite oratorio Elijah, giving the first performances of the work as part of the MSO’s subscription series in more than 20 years. “The Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, prepared by director Cheryl Frazes Hill, played an enormous role in the performance and won a good deal of the final applause, as it should,” wrote Elaine Schmidt in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Highlights of the MSO’s recent seasons have included similar revivals of Mahler’s second symphony, Poulenc’s Gloria, and Brahms’s German Requiem alongside performances with contemporary artists, including a sold-out, onenight-only engagement with mandolinist and composer Chris Thile in the spring of 2025. In 2024, the chorus was a central focus of Masur’s ongoing exploration of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, lending their voices to his Magnificat as part of the MSO’s first city-wide Bach Festival in the spring and the towering Christmas Oratorio the following November.
For decades, the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus has held sway as one of the finest symphonic choruses in the nation, a fact underscored by the remarkable diversity of their accomplishments. As we savor each musical moment of a golden anniversary season ornamented by some of the most sublime cornerstones of the choral repertoire, we pay tribute to the countless individuals who have made the chorus what it is today: a first-rate ensemble devoted not only to their craft, but to building true artistic community and weaving the thread of their past into the rich tapestry of their present. Looking toward the horizon, Frazes Hill envisions a future of continued growth. “That sounds trite, but you can never stay the same, year after year. To improve becomes more difficult the higher up you go — it takes dedication and constant work. The devil is in the details, and there are many details. It takes commitment to the work, patience, discipline, and practice to keep this chorus going and growing. And we have the right people for the task!”
26 FEBRUARY 1972
12 JUNE 1976
7 JUNE 1978
“The Conservatory Singers,” prepared by Margaret Hawkins, make their first appearance in Uihlein Hall led by the MSO’s second music director, Kenenth Schermerhorn, singing Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms
The newly formed Wisconsin Conservatory Symphony Chorus debuts with Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust
The chorus sings Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C minor, the “Resurrection,” at the 33rd National Conference of the American Symphony Orchestra League
30 SEPTEMBER 1978
3 FEBRUARY 1979
The MSO’s first radio broadcast, featuring the chorus singing Schubert’s Mass No. 2 in G major, is recorded in Uihlein Hall under the direction of Kenneth Schermerhorn for broadcast on Chicago’s WFMT network and distribution to the British Broadcasting Corporation, receiving airtime in Great Britain and Western Europe
Margaret Hawkins makes her orchestral conducting debut leading the chorus in Mozart’s Mass in C minor, “The Great”
10 MARCH 1979
26 APRIL 1980
17 MAY 1980
Kenneth Schermerhorn leads the male voices of the chorus in the North American premiere of Jean Sibelius’s Kullervo
Margaret Hawkins conducts her first complete Classics series subscription program in an all-Bach concert, featuring the Orchestral Suite No. 3, Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, and Cantata No. 80, “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott”
The chorus makes their Carnegie Hall debut with Kenneth Schermerhorn in a performance of Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky cantata
24 DECEMBER 1981 Margaret Hawkins and the chorus are featured in an hour-long “Carol Along” special on TV 6
26-27 AND 29 MAY 1983
3 JUNE 1983
Led by the MSO’s third Music Director, Lukas Foss, the chorus produces their first recording of works by Foss, Ives, and Stravinsky for the ProArte label
Lukas Foss leads the chorus in a performance of choral excerpts from Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land with the composer in attendance as part of its Aaron Copland Music Festival
17 JUNE 1983
In honor of her contributions to the national image of Milwaukee and its tradition of choral excellence, Mayor of Milwaukee Henry Maier issues a mayoral proclamation declaring 17 June 1983 Margaret Hawkins Day
14 APRIL 1984
29 JUNE 1984
The chorus returns to Carnegie Hall under the direction of Lukas Foss for a performance of Mozart’s Mass in C minor, “The Great”
The chorus makes its debut at the famed Ravinia Festival in their first performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of James Levine, singing Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major, the “Symphony of a Thousand”
3 OCTOBER 1984
As part of the MSO’s third annual American Composers Festival, the chorus sings the world premiere of David Del Tredici’s The Last Gospel with the composer in attendance
26 OCTOBER 1985
Celebrating their 10th anniversary season, Margaret Hawkins leads the ensemble in Haydn’s Die Schöpfung (“The Creation”) in their first performance as the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus
17 OCTOBER 1986 Lukas Foss leads the chorus in a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms with the composer in attendance as part of the MSO’s Leonard Bernstein Festival
10 JULY 1987
The chorus returns to the Ravinia Festival for a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 under the baton of James Levine
31 JULY 1988
15 APRIL 1989
Zdeněk Mácal, the MSO’s fourth music director, concludes Milwaukee’s annual German Fest by leading the combined forces of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus and the Bel Canto Chorus in a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor at the Marcus Amphitheater’s first all-classical concert for an audience of 12,000, the largest in the orchestra’s history
The chorus premieres Lukas Foss’s With Music Strong, a work commissioned by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra League and dedicated to Margaret Hawkins in honor of the orchestra’s 30th anniversary
17-18 APRIL 1989 The chorus records With Music Strong for commercial release on the Koss Classics label
30 JULY 1989
31 JULY 1989
The chorus returns to Milwaukee’s German Fest for their second performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at the Marcus Amphitheater
29 JULY 1990
28 OCTOBER 1990
The chorus records
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 for the Koss Classics label
29 OCTOBER 1990
The chorus returns to Milwaukee’s German Fest for their third performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at the Marcus Amphitheater
The MSO returns to Chicago’s Orchestra Hall for their first public performance at the venue with the chorus singing Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky cantata under Mácal’s baton to a sold-out house
21 JANUARY 1991
The chorus records
Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky for the Koss Classics label
The chorus records
Berlioz’s Lélio, ou Le retour à la vie, for the Koss Classics label
28 JULY 1991
20 AUGUST 1991
The chorus returns to Milwaukee’s German Fest for their fourth performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at the Marcus Amphitheater
Presenting a restoration of Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 film Alexander Nevsky at the Ravinia Festival, the chorus sings the film’s score under the direction of Lawrence Foster
15 FEBRUARY 1992 In their first a capella concert, the chorus sings Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil to a sold-out house at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist
9 MARCH 1992
The chorus records composerin-residence Roberto Sierra’s Idilio for the Koss Classics label
19 JUNE 1992
The chorus returns to the Ravinia Festival for its third performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 under the baton of James Levine
28 AUGUST 1992
13 NOVEMBER 1993
The chorus, led by Carl Davis, delivers the Ravinia premiere of Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Oratorio
Following an extended illness, chorus foundress Margaret Hawkins passes, prompting an outpouring of tributes by the local press, a series of memorial concerts around Milwaukee, and the fundraising campaign for the Margaret Hawkins Chorus Director Chair
11 FEBRUARY 1994
The chorus sings the Midwest premiere of John Adams’s Harmonium
9 JUNE 1994
22 JUNE 1996
12 SEPTEMBER 1997
The chorus presents a screening of Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky as part of the MSO’s Russian Festival
Lee Erickson, Margaret Hawkins’s longtime assistant, is named the second director of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus
Andreas Delfs, the MSO’s fifth music director, inaugurates his tenure with a concert arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov at St. Josaphat’s Basilica
23 MAY 1998
11 SEPTEMBER 1998
8 FEBRUARY 2001
17 NOVEMBER 2001
28-30 NOVEMBER 2003
The chorus produces its first a cappella record, featuring Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Chorus, recorded live at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist
The MSO opens its 40th anniversary season with a semi-staged production of Puccini’s Turandot
The chorus celebrates its 25th anniversary with the world premiere of composer-in-residence Daniel Schynder’s The Revelation of St. John, commissioned by the MSO and sponsored by the MSO League
The chorus performs the world premiere of Timothy Tikker’s Living Stones, a work commissioned in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Basilica of St. Josaphat
Andreas Delfs, the MSO, and the chorus record Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel live in Uihlein Hall for the Avie label
22 APRIL 2005
The chorus performs the world premiere of Gil Shohat’s Songs of Bathsheba under the baton of John Nelson
6 AUGUST 2005
The chorus returns to the Ravinia Festival for a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 led by Christoph Eschenbach
13 MAY 2006
In honor of the chorus’s 30th anniversary, Mayor of Milwaukee Tom Barrett issues a mayoral proclamation declaring 13 May 2006 Milwaukee Symphony Chorus Day
10 DECEMBER 2008
The chorus records Roberto Sierra’s Missa Latina, “Pro Pace” live in Uihlein Hall for the Naxos label
21 JULY 2011
18 & 20
SEPTEMBER 2015
29 MAY 2016
The chorus returns to the Ravinia Festival for a performance of Rachmaninoff’s cantatas The Bells and Spring — the first performance of each work at Ravinia — with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra led by James Conlon
Under the director of Edo de Waart, the MSO’s sixth music director, the orchestra and chorus give fully staged performances of Mozart’s Così fan tutte as part of the MSO’s multi-season cycle of the complete Mozart-da Ponte operas
Celebrating their 40th anniversary season, the chorus sings Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, the last performance of Lee Erickson’s career as chorus director
17, 18, & 20
SEPTEMBER 2016
11 MAY 2017
20 OCTOBER 2017
19 MAY 2018
The orchestra and chorus stage Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro as part of the MSO’s multi-season cycle of the complete Mozartda Ponte operas
Following a national search, Dr. Cheryl Frazes Hill is named the third director of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus
Cheryl Frazes Hill leads her first performance as chorus director for the Milwaukee Bucks’ season opener at Fiserv Forum
Ken-David Masur, the MSO’s seventh music director, makes his MSO debut leading the chorus in performances of Ravel’s Suite No. 2 from Daphnis et Chloé and Vaughan Williams’s Flos campi
11 & 19
JANUARY 2019
Led by music director laureate Edo de Waart, the chorus takes to the stage in Uihlein Hall for a production of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman
8 JULY 2019
The chorus returns to the Ravinia Festival for a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 led by Marin Alsop
10 DECEMBER 2021 Led by Jeff Tyzik, the chorus makes its Allen-Bradley Hall debut in the MSO’s annual Holiday Pops performances
25 MARCH 2022
3 OCTOBER 2025
The chorus gives its first Classics subscription performance at the Bradley Symphony Center in a semistaged adaptation of Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt, directed by Bill Barclay of Concert Theatre Works
The chorus inaugurates its 50th anniversary season with a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 under Ken-David Masur
