About

We Are True Concord

Tucson’s only GRAMMY- & EMMY-honored ensemble, True Concord Voices & Orchestra thrills audiences in live performances and over international radio waves with innovative programming and some of the finest professional voices and instrumentalists from across the country.

True Concord is committed to performances of celebrated masterworks and music of today’s leading composers. Recent performances and premieres include Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Mass in B Minor, Mozart’s Requiem and Mass in C Minor, Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, Haydn’s The Creation, Jake Runestad’s Earth Symphony and Jocelyn Hagen’s Here I Am. Other commissions and premieres have involved Stephen Paulus, Gerald Near, Ola Gjeilo, Paul Crabtree and Sheldon Curry.

After the tragic death of Stephen Paulus, True Concord launched the annual Stephen Paulus Emerging Composers Competition, a national initiative to honor Paulus’s legacy of nurturing young composers. Similarly, True Concord supports the next generation of performers and music makers through its high school masterclass program and Composer-in-Residence Jocelyn Hagen’s Compose Like a Girl program in a new partnership with Tucson Girls Chorus and Literacy Connects’ Stories that Soar!, bringing together budding authors and composers.

Known for adventurous collaborations, True Concord partners with many outstanding performing ensembles and arts organizations. Collaborative partners include UA’s Arizona Choir, Arizona Early Music, Tucson Arizona Boys Chorus, Tucson Girls Chorus, Tucson Symphony Orchestra, UA Dance, Cantus, Phoenix Chorale, James Sewell Ballet, UA’s Poetry Center and Hotel Congress. In addition to notable partnerships, True Concord engages with nationally- and internationally-known soloists of the highest caliber, including Kelley O’Connor, Morris Robinson, Jubilant Sykes, Corinne Winters, Susanna Phillips, Nicole Cabell and Ryan Speedo Green.

In 2015 True Concord made its debut in New York City at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall with a performance of their commission Prayers and Remembrances by Stephen Paulus. On that same day, True Concord released its Far in the Heavens CD, comprised of recently composed and previously unrecorded works by Paulus. That year, Far in the Heavens earned a GRAMMY nomination for
Best Choral Performance, and Paulus’s 35-minute oratorio was awarded the GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. True Concord continues to make world premiere recordings with the critically acclaimed Christmas With True Concord: Carols in the American Voice and the just released A Dream So Bright: Choral Music of Jake Runestad. Its recording of Jocelyn Hagen’s two major choral-orchestral works is set to release in 2025.

During the pandemic, True Concord was recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, which identified arts organizations leading the way in transition and perseverance in its special report titled “The Art of Reopening: A Guide to Current Practice Among Arts Organizations During COVID-19.” Closer to home, True Concord was honored with a StartUp Tucson Resiliency Award.

One of its strategies from the pandemic that continues is the filming of concerts through a collaboration with Arizona PBS. These have garnered EMMY nominations in the “Audio Live or Post Produced” category and the EMMY for “Musical Composition/Arrangement” for Jake Runestad’s Earth Symphony that True Concord commissioned.

As it enters its third decade, True Concord is guided by the Board’s vision of building an enduring organization, creating a national treasure and sharing the transformative power of music with audiences for generations to come.