125th Anniversary Weekend Schedule
Friday, May 2, 2025, and Saturday, May 3, 2025
RCS alums and friends, you are cordially invited to the RCS 125th Anniversary Celebration the weekend of May 2nd and 3rd, 2025, in Cambridge, MA.
The festivities will include:
Friday, May 2, 2025: The reunion weekend will kick off with a brief social gathering for RCS singers, alums, and friends, immediately followed by an RCS concert in Sanders Theatre at 8pm. RCS’s landmark season will culminate in the May 2 stand-alone RCS 125th Anniversary Concert as part of Harvard’s ARTS FIRST Festival. During this concert, RCS will premiere commissioned works from composers Chen Yi and Dale Trumbore in addition to works written by current RCS members Anika Christensen ’26 and Eve Jones ’27.
Saturday, May 3, 2025: All-day RCS reunion celebration of the 125th anniversary. In the company and under the conduction of past and present RCS musical directors, the day will include singing of RCS music across the eras, food, drink, and socializing, as well as a trip through RCS history. The day will culminate with a wine-and-cheese reception at the end of the afternoon, with time thereafter for informal gatherings among friends.
Please join us for any or all of the celebration. A more detailed schedule and registration information will be posted in this space closer to the event, so check back as the year goes on! The detailed schedule and other information will also be provided by e-mail when available.
If you have questions or are interested in volunteering, please email us at rcsf125@gmail.com.
Program Notes
Dr. Chen has been described as a strong advocate for new music, American composers, Asian composers, and women in music. Her compositions blend Chinese and Western traditions, and have received numerous awards and prizes in both China and the United States. She has been the Lorena Searcy/Cravens/Missouri Distinguished Professor of Composition at the Conservatory of Music and Dance in the University of Missouri-Kansas City since 1998, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2005. Her music has been performed worldwide and recorded in over 100 CDs on a variety of record labels since 1986. For more, see https://conservatory.umkc.edu/profiles/faculty-directory/chen-yi.html.
Ms. Trumbore is a Los Angeles-based composer who is passionate about setting to music poems, prose, and found text by living writers. Her music, which has been called “devastatingly beautiful” by the Washington Post and been praised for its “soaring melodies and beguiling harmonies deployed with finesse” by the New York Times, has been performed widely, both across the US and abroad, and has won a number of awards. Ms. Trumbore’s work that RCS will be premiering in the anniversary concert was commissioned from the RCSF-funded Beverly Taylor Fund for Soprano-Alto Choral Music. For more, see https://www.daletrumbore.com
