Choir Concert: "Stronger Than the Storm"

Featuring Glee, Chamber Singers, and Jazz Singers

Purchase tickets for either or both the concerts in the SMC Chapel HERE.
Tickets: $15 Faculty/Staff/Non-SMC Students; $20 General Admission; SMC Students, High School Juniors, and Admitted First Year Students for Fall '26 FREE with student ID.

PLEASE PURCHASE TICKETS ONLINE AHEAD OF TIME TO REDUCE THE SIZE OF LINES AND ALLOW THE CONCERT TO START ON TIME.

3pm only Livestream $20 suggested donation made here: stmarys-ca.edu/musicgives
The livestream link will be posted on this page before the performance. If you miss the livestream, contact tms8@stmarys-ca.edu to request the link to the recorded performance. 

FULL PROGRAM LINK HERE

Stronger Than the Storm, featuring Glee, Chamber Singers, and Jazz Singers, brings to life a rich tapestry of music reflecting the enduring human capacity to recognize hardship, withstand it, and—within community—emerge renewed. Themes of perseverance and hope are woven throughout texts that honor ancestral strength, confront suffering and injustice, and affirm that “love, indivisible…strength indescribable…brings a peace beyond all human understanding.”

From the profound depth of excerpts from Mass of the Forgotten to the rhythmic vitality of the ancestral prayer Mojuba, the expansive Nepalese imagery of Tse Go La, and the rousing I Know Where I've Been from Hairspray, each work offers a distinct lens on grief, resilience, and redemption. These are set alongside a Renaissance love song by Sermisy, the heart-wrenching jazz classic Body and Soul, and more contemporary works by Billie Eilish, Earth, Wind & Fire, The Beatles, Rascal Flatts, Reba McEntire, U2, and Beyoncé.

Directed by Dr. Julie Ford, with Professors Meredith Hawkins and Paul Caccamo, the evening includes highlights from four senior capstone soloists (Kate Conti, Rose Du Pont, Kaylin Holliman, and Ashlyn Storie). A variety of instrumentalists—students, alumni, and guest artists—bring this music to life with percussion, harp, strings, flutes, guitars, organ, piano, and a chorus of rainsticks, creating a textured, luminous, and at times toe-tapping sound experience that is both intimate and powerful. The concert culminates in the closing piece, Stronger Than the Storm by Greg Murai, featuring all the choirs. We hope you leave with tears, laughter, hope, and a shared knowing: that together, rooted in love, we are stronger than any storm.

Things to Know Before You Go:
We are happy that we can once again charge tickets to offset costs of our choir concerts. For a number of years, this was on pause due to particular interpretations of canon law that are now resolved. This is good news for us because it will be a more predictable way to manage our planning, and will make more things possible.

Please purchase your tickets ahead of time to reduce the size of the ticketing line and to allow the concert to start on time.

Those who purchased tickets ahead of time will just say their last name at WILL CALL and can quickly go on through.

 Saint Mary's students with an SMC ID will also quickly be allowed to enter.

Running Time: About 1.5 hours (slightly longer at 7pm as we honor the choir seniors toward the end)

Guest parking can be found in the lot to the left of the entrance gate for 50 cents per hour. Please text "PAY" to 77447 and enter "SMC" when the lot # is requested. Limited accessible parking is available just in front of the Chapel, or you may drop off there before going to the guest parking.