Tucson Girls Chorus returning to Carnegie Hall

Tucson Girls Chorus is closing its 39th season on one of the country’s most storied stages.

The choir will headline the 2025 National Treble Chorus festival on June 14 at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

More than 50 singers from Tucson Girls Chorus’s Advanced, Jubilate and Alumnae choirs will be part of the festival choir featuring choristers from around the country. As headliners, the Tucson Girls Chorus advanced choir will perform a set on its own.

“It’s everyone’s dream to be part of something like this, in such an iconic place,” said Marcela Molina, Tucson Girls Chorus artistic and executive director. “To be on that stage just to begin with is very, very exciting and humbling.”

The choir will give Tucson a preview of the Carnegie Hall concert on Sunday, June 1, when it performs “Whisper Between Worlds.” The free concert at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 7650 N. Paseo Del Norte, begins at 3 p.m.

National Treble Chorus is produced by New York-based National Concerts, an organization that creates artistic collaborations for choirs, orchestras and bands at Carnegie Hall and other renowned venues.

In addition to leading her choir’s performance, Molina also is co-conductor of the festival chorus with Diana V. Sáez, choral activities director of Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. The pair also curated the program, which includes works by Caroline Shaw, Eric Whitacre, Jorge Salazar, Tracy Wong, the husband-and-wife team of Timothy Takach and Jocelyn Hagen, and Kyle Pederson.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

The concert also includes the world premiere of composer Moira Smiley‘s “Who We Are,” commissioned by National Concerts on Molina’s recommendation.

“I’ve been a fan of Moira Smiley’s work for a long time,” Molina said, recalling a conversation with National Concerts CEO Matthew Workman early last year when he invited Tucson Girls Chorus and Molina to headline the 2025 show. “I remember when I first talked to Matt, he asked me, ‘Who are you thinking to be the composer in residence?’ ... I said I would love to work with Moira.”

When Molina reached out to Smiley, “she was so excited from the beginning to be able to do this,” she said.

Smiley’s prolific career includes commissions by LA Master Chorale, Conspirare, Cincinnati Vocal Arts Ensemble, Mirabai, Stile Antico, American Choral Directors Association, Voces Novae, VocalEssence, Pacific Chorale and countless others, as well as composing for film, video games, theater, dance and feature film soundtracks.

This will be Tucson Girls Chorus’s second Carnegie Hall performance. The group was one of several choirs collaborating on John Rutter’s “Mass of the Children” in 2009, two years into Molina’s tenure as artistic director. She had joined the group as a part-time director in 2006.

Molina, who made her Carnegie debut when she was an undergraduate at Westminster College of the Arts in New Jersey, said Tucson Girls Chorus is among “a very, very select and privileged group of women” given the rare opportunity to perform on the Carnegie Hall stage.

“I just hope that they get to cherish this for what it is, the grandeur and the privilege of what it is to be able to not only share the stage with people from all over the country and perform, but also to have the opportunity to sing on their own and represent Tucson at such a high level in this iconic, historical place,” Molina said.