The Esoterics

The esoterics is Celebrating 33 years of music in 2026. It's in no small part due to donations from people like you. We are grateful!  

As a THANK YOU for your donation this year, your receipt will include the streaming links to the past year of full concert performances!

33 Years strong

Over the past year, The Esoterics continued our tradition of highlighting singular contemporary choral compositions – showcasing harmonies, dissonances, themes & variations across our specialized spectrum of the musical and the metaphysical. (See our Media Gallery below for a sampling!)

In times of arts being defunded, recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, threats to civil liberties, and erosion of human empathy, we have kept singing, bringing the work of lesser-known composers to all.

Your support through this year's GiveBIG campaign helps us achieve this!

The video below is a glimpse from our last concert, MOVEMENT & MYTH, performed in collaboration with Bellevue Youth Choirs. It features the music of Malaysian-Canadian composer Tracy Wong, whose work draws upon folk traditions, pop culture, and ancient texts into vivid stories of dragons, sailors, and spirits. Text for the pieces draw on voices as wide-ranging as Hildegard of Bingen, Filipino poets, French Canadian folk music, and the Vancouver pop-rock band Marianas Trench.

In 2025, our 32nd season took us from the outer reaches of the solar system to the walls of an immigration detention center, and a few extraordinary places in between. We opened in March with ORBIT & ORACLE, exploring the music of German composer Michael Ostrzyga and his cycle of planets, gods, and strange solar system bodies. Spring brought PROMISE & PROPHECY and the music of New York composer Martha Sullivan — Elizabethan verse, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Nostradamus, and dragons. In autumn, FERVOR & FLIGHT showcased the evocative, culturally rich music of composer Juhi Bansal, bringing together the immigrant experience, the natural world, and ancient texts across cultures. And we closed our year in December with BEASTS & BEAUTIES, a joyful and witty exploration of the music of French composer Philippe Bodin: masses, motets, a bestiary of hilariously personified animals, and a shimmering homage to the northern lights

Below is a sample from rehearsal for FERVOR & FLIGHT, featuring the singers Mary Kleshefsky and Cory Myers singing Bansal's piece, We came searching for a home, setting the famous Emma Lazarus poem, "The New Colossus."

Upcoming Performance!

Please join us May 16 at 8pm in Seattle at Plymouth United Church downtown or May 17 at 3pm in Tacoma at Christ Episcopal Church. An online streaming link is also available for purchase. All details are HERE!

This May, Seattle vocal ensemble The Esoterics presents RITES & RESISTANCE, a compelling concert of new works by African-American composer Tara Mack. Blending themes of childhood, cultural identity, and social justice, the program offers a moving exploration of both personal and collective experience.

A soprano with London’s Oriana Choir, Mack began composing in 2019 and has quickly gained international recognition, with performances across the U.S. and Europe. Her music reflects her lived experiences as a mother, her African-American heritage, and her commitment to equity—threads that shape this thoughtfully curated program.

The concert opens with playful, imaginative works capturing a child’s curiosity, followed by settings of poetry by Georgia Douglas Johnson that explore maternal love and longing. In Truth, Mack sets verses by Gwendolyn Brooks to examine honesty and deception in today’s world, while Harlem night song, drawn from Langston Hughes, offers a moment of lyrical intimacy. A lively round from the 13th century Summer is icumen in returns us to the impish humor and innocence of childhood.

The second half features Virtues of Resistance, a six-movement cycle inspired by the words of activists including Frederick Douglass and bell hooks, Arundhati Roy, Susan B. Anthony and others.. Through themes of Faith, Anger, Courage, Community, Love, and Joy, the work connects historical movements for justice to the present day.

The program concludes with the world premiere of Island, a new commission set to poetry by Langston Hughes, inviting audiences to join in song.

Please join us in creating an exciting new season of music.

We deeply appreciate your continued support!

Read the December 2023 feature article about the Esoterics in The Seattle Times