Handel’s Messiah: CCGS 68th Annual Winter Concert
Sunday, December 13, 2026
4:00 PM
Kupferberg Center for the Arts
65-30 Kissena Boulevard, Queens, NY 11367
Scheduled
About This Event
George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Messiah, long central to New York concert life, is presented by CCGS as its 68th Annual Winter Concert at the Kupferberg Center for the Arts. Handel’s music, built on direct rhetoric and clear architectural pacing, foregrounds textual clarity and communal choral forces—qualities that explain the work’s continuing place in choral programming.
About Messiah(oratorio)
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel’s *Messiah* (1741) is an English-language oratorio that traces a Christian narrative of prophecy, birth, passion, and redemption through choruses, arias, and recitatives drawn from scripture. In New York, it became a civic ritual early on; the Handel and Haydn Society introduced it to the city in 1770, and annual performances helped anchor Manhattan’s choral culture. At David Geffen Hall, Jane Glover leads soloists Amanda Forsythe, Nicholas Phan, John Holiday, and Kevin Deas with the Music of the Baroque Chorus directed by Andrew Megill. Its most telling feature is how communal the drama feels, even when the text stays at a reflective distance.
About the Artist
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-born composer who built his career in Britain, shaping the Baroque stage through opera, sacred drama, and instrumental writing. His oratorios—especially *Messiah*—remain central to New York City concert life, regularly heard at David Geffen Hall in large-scale choral performances.