This story originally appeared in our May 13-26 print edition. Check out the edition online here and find where you can get a print edition near you here.
The May Festival is the oldest choral festival west of the Alleghenies, and it continues to broaden the palette for choral music to include contemporary and neglected works performed by the superb 140-member May Festival Chorus, the resident choral ensemble for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Cincinnati Pops.
This year’s artistic director is Grammy-winner soprano Julia Bullock, acclaimed for curating programs reflecting probing intelligence and commitment to a vivid aural experience.
Also joining the May Festival is CSO Music Director Cristian Măcelaru, leading the season’s first two concerts.
The invitation to be May Festival’s 2026 artistic director was “an unexpected gift,” Bullock wrote in an email. It was also a challenge to be at the helm of a revered music event that celebrates its 125th season this year.
“The May Festival is more than two weekends of choral music,” she said. “I see it as a cycle where history and the present contend. It was critical to honor the 125-year legacy of the festival, which has encouraged the Cincinnati community to commit to it year after year, alongside aspects of the festival’s history that — like much of North American history — were outright discriminatory and prejudiced.”
She became a scholar of the festival’s past, working in close collaboration with May Festival Chorus Director Matthew Swanson to ensure this year’s program was both a celebration and a necessary reckoning.
The opening night underscores the two concepts. Works by Bruckner and von Zemlinsky are followed by songs and choral works by Margaret Bonds, concluding with what Bullock calls “an eclectic mass” inspired by the early May Festival openings, which were famously diverse offerings of arias, choral pieces and orchestral works.
“Bonds’ music has a forceful presence and an immediate delicacy,” Bullock said.
The festival places Bonds’ music in a dialogue with other giants of the American experience. Specifically, Bullock paired German settings of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen with Bonds’ own settings of these poets, creating a cross-continental dialogue on the Black American experience.
Bullock and Swanson assembled a “one-time only” mass spanning 500 years of choral history. The mass is framed chronologically, incorporating various religious and musical traditions to explore the idea of celebration in the face of death and loss. A highlight of this assembly is the inclusion of Carlos Simon’s “Good News Mass,” with Simon himself performing on the Hammond organ.
“Weaving Simon’s work into the traditional mass framework, we hope to connect forces of good across religious traditions, concluding with the high-energy ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ from Quincy Jones’s ‘A Soulful Celebration,’” said Swanson.
The focus on the American identity is further explored through William Grant Still’s “Plain-Chant for America,” featured in the concluding concert.
“This premiered just weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor,” Swanson explains. “The piece serves as a deeply compelling reminder of America’s status as a beacon of freedom and the profound responsibility that identity entails.”
By including these works alongside those of Bonds and Stephen Paulus, the festival highlights voices that were historically overlooked but remain vital to the American choral canon.
Bullock’s programming approach also explores a confluence of musical interests between the CSO and the May Festival. Pairing a journey through water combines Duke Ellington’s “The River” with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “A Sea Symphony,” the latter of which utilizes the poetry of Walt Whitman.
“These two works are extraordinarily congruent,” says Swanson. “Both composers use water as a primary metaphor for the human experience.”
In addition to these sweeping orchestral works, the festival offers highly theatrical challenges for chorus and orchestra with Swanson conducting. A bold pairing features Igor Stravinsky’s “Les Noces (The Wedding)” and Orff’s “Catulli Carmina.” Both pieces utilize a unique instrumentation of four pianos and percussion, creating a percussive, primal atmosphere.
“Les Noces” depicts a peasant wedding, grounded in Stravinsky’s fascination with the stark, sensual rhythms and music of his native Russia. Original choreography by Yoshihisa Arai will be performed by Cincinnati Ballet 2.
Orff’s work is based on poetry by the Roman poet Catullus, a play within a play that displays the chorus’ singing skills in a distinctive a cappella style. The poetry is gleefully satiric, bawdy and poignant.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of this year’s festival is its direct engagement with its own history. Bullock was mindful that while the festival has a storied 125-year legacy, it also possesses a history less well known and up until recently, ignored. For more than half of its existence, persons of color could not join the May Festival Chorus.
This year’s finale marks a symbolic anniversary: It has been 70 years since baritone William Warfield and soprano Leontyne Price performed selections from “Porgy and Bess” in Cincinnati. By bringing “Porgy and Bess” back to the stage, the festival commemorates the first time Black Cincinnatians sang with the May Festival Chorus. The CSO’s Classical Roots Community Choir joins the May Festival Chorus for this grand finale.
Bullock emphasized that including more “community choral moments” in this anniversary year was a priority, ensuring the festival maintains a welcoming and warm feeling while pushing for greater access.
Leonard Bernstein’s “Make Our Garden Grow” is a choice Swanson calls the “capstone” of the festival. From the community picnic in Washington Park to the final notes in Music Hall, the focus remains on “getting people together,” which Swanson asserts has always been at the heart of the festival.
Through Bullock’s vision, the May Festival has become more than a concert series; it is a collaborative effort involving the CSO, the Vocal Arts Ensemble, Cincinnati Ballet, the Classical Roots Community Choir and local institutions.
“I relied on muscle memory and the support of the brilliant team at the May Festival to navigate the complexities of being both a curator and a performer,” she says.
“Human utterances are boundless in terms of expressiveness,” Bullock continues. “When we call out to each other, sometimes in the most primal ways, it’s difficult to not be impacted even if it’s just to the sound itself, be it intense or intimate, it’s profoundly powerful.”
This article appears in May 13-26, 2026.
