Cover of Santa Fe Desert Chorale’s new album. Courtesy photo

Santa Fe Desert Chorale. Photo credit Tira Howard Photography

SFDC News:

NEW YORK, NY — The nationally recognized chamber choir Santa Fe Desert Chorale, one of the longest-running professional music organizations in New Mexico, led by Artistic Director Joshua Habermann, announces the release of its new album, Roots & Rivers, available on major streaming platforms on June 12, 2026, via Navona Records.

In Roots & Rivers, Habermann and the Desert Chorale present commissioned works by Reena Esmail, Jocelyn Hagen, Kile Smith, and Shawn Okpebholo, and a special arrangement of Shawn Kirchner’s Sweet Rivers. These works bring together stories and music rooted in the shared experience of overcoming adversity, of enduring a journey from darkness into light. The album is an offering of gratitude for the outpouring of new American choral music.

Artistic Director Joshua Habermann

“Choral music is a living art form, and when you have that combination of great new music, really interesting composers, and one of the nation’s best choirs, a recording is in order,” says Habermann, who has served as artistic director of the ensemble since 2008. Under his leadership, the Desert Chorale has been at the forefront of new American choral music, commissioning more than 35 new works through the Desert Chorale Commissioning Club, which was founded in 2019 to expand the repertoire. Roots & Rivers consists of “all new music that’s been written for this ensemble in the last five years,” Habermann adds. “In a way, it’s a calling card from Santa Fe; it gives people a sense of what’s happening here.”

The album opens with Reena Esmail’s The Tipping Point, which infuses elements of Indian classical music into Western forms to depict light overcoming darkness. Written for the Desert Chorale in 2021, the piece is a conversation between the voices and the tabla, an Indian percussion instrument. The voices take on the rhythms of the drum as they work through a series of variations of increasing intensity. Two solo voices then soar above the choir, leading to a luminous and hopeful ending. Light overcomes darkness not through force, but tenderly, just as young shoots might grow into a mighty tree. 

For the Desert Chorale’s 2022 season, the Commissioning Club selected Minnesota-based composer Jocelyn Hagen, who wrote a bilingual work, in Spanish and English, to reflect Santa Fe’s multicultural identity. Combining poetry of Antonio Machado and Julia Klatt Singer, Caminante (“Traveler”) divides the choir into two groups, each with its own language and song. The choirs present their songs independently before Hagen brings them together in the final verse, yielding surprising and delightful results. The synergy suggests possibilities for connection and cooperation across boundaries between language and culture.

Kile Smith’s Northland is a four-movement work that the Desert Chorale premiered in 2023 as part of its American Immigrant Experience program. It uses a quintessentially American musical language characterized by syncopation, elements of blues and jazz, and a melodic lyricism to explore the poetry of Claude McKay, an early 20th-century Jamaican immigrant to New York. Northland takes us from McKay’s homesickness after his arrival to discrimination and rootlessness and eventually to the thrill of big-city life. Ultimately, McKay shows us acceptance and deep affection for his new country. In Smith’s writing, the piano is an equal partner to the voices, sometimes supporting and other times leading with driving rhythms.

The American Road is a major commission by Shawn Okpebholo that reimagines African American folk traditions. Premiered in 2025, the six-movement piece draws from a variety of American musical traditions, ranging from African American spirituals to hymns and gospel music. It encompasses themes of sacrifice, oppression, freedom, war, healing, and strength. The American Road was commissioned by Lindsay S. Pope in memory of her grandmother, Hope Stearns Anderson, who instilled in her a love of music and deep appreciation of beauty. It is a significant addition to the choral canon.

The Desert Chorale has enjoyed a close association with Shawn Kirchner, who has distinguished himself as a master arranger and interpreter of American folk styles. Kirchner originally wrote Sweet Rivers in D Major, but the Desert Chorale requested a special version in the higher key of Eb. That version is recorded here, together with a piano introduction inspired by an improvisation that Kirchner performed while in concert with the ensemble. 

For more details, including artist and composer bios, and all credits, please click here.

More about the Santa Fe Desert Chorale:

The Santa Fe Desert Chorale, a 501(c)(3) organization, is a centerpiece of cultural life in Santa Fe. It performs in historical venues, such as the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, and its annual Summer Festival is one of the nation’s largest choral events.

Under the direction of Artistic Director Joshua Habermann since 2008, the 24-member ensemble performs a wide-ranging repertoire, attracting audiences from around the world, and earning a reputation as “a rara avis in the choral music world” (Santa Fe New Mexican). The ensemble’s first commercial release, The Road Home, debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard Classical Chart. The Desert Chorale was founded in 1982 by Lawrence “Larry” Bandfield. Visit desertchorale.org.