The Elora Singers are celebrating the holiday season with two concerts and gift ideas, including Handel’s iconic Messiah. Founded in 1980, The Elora Singers are the ensemble-in-residence of the Elora Festival each summer, along with offering a regular concert series throughout the season. They are led by Mark Vuorinen, and under his direction, have reached new heights of performance in a diverse range of styles and genres.
As a recording ensemble, The Elora Singers have released 12 albums on the NAXOS label, and earned both GRAMMY and JUNO Award nominations.
Along with live performances, The Elora Singers offer gift options that include their highly acclaimed CDs, and tickets to their 2026 winter and spring season.
Holiday Concerts
Handel: Messiah (December 7, 2025)
The Elora Singers have made Handel’s holiday classic their own as a signature piece. They perform the work with soloists drawn from the ensemble, which creates a distinctive take on the work. The concert takes place in the resonant acoustics of St. Joseph’s Parish, under the direction of Mark Vuorinen.
Festival of Carols (December 16 & December 17, 2025)
The Festival of Carols has become an Elora tradition, performed at St. John’s Anglican Church, a historic church built in the Gothic revival style. The Elora Singers and Mark Vuorinen are joined by organist Jonathan Oldengarm to perform a mixture of beloved traditional works, along with new pieces to discover. The concert’s highlights include the premiere of a newly commissioned carol by JUNO-winning songwriter and composer Sarah Slean created especially for the ensemble.
2026 Concerts
Here’s a quick look at the rest of The Elora Singers’ 2025/26 season.
Soup and Song: Motets Through the Centuries (February 7, 2026)
The Elora Singers explore the motet — a polyphonic vocal work that is often sacred in nature, and typically performed without instrumental accompaniment — through five centuries of music. The concert’s program begins with the work of Renaissance masters Palestrina and Tallis, working through J.S. Bach’s Komm, Jesu, komm, towards the work of modern composers in the genre, including music by William Harris, James MacMillan, Arvo Pärt, and Imant Raminsh. Ticket holders are also invited to a soup lunch to add warmth to the winter season.
Sarah Kirkland Snider: Mass for the Endangered (March 29, 2026)
Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered is a contemporary reimagining of the traditional Latin mass with a message that is both an elegy for what has been lost, and a plea to preserve what still remains. Traditional texts combine with poetry by contemporary American musician and poet Nathaniel Bellows in a moving and expressive score, blending choral beauty with reflection on the state of our environment.
The Passing of the Year: With Members of The Elora Singers Studio for Ensemble Singing (April 26, 2026)
The Elora Singers’ 2025–26 season concludes with a performance of Jonathan Dove’s The Passing of the Year. The work premiered in 2000 in a performance with the London Symphony Chorus, who commissioned the piece. Using text by poets Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Emily Dickinson, George Peele, Thomas Nashe and William Blake, the work offers a range of emotions from warmth and quiet reflection to its glorious climax. The Elora Singers will be joined by participants of The Elora Singers Studio for Ensemble Singing, as a culmination of an intensive week of learning and collaboration.
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