Chorale Coeur d'Alene previews Carnegie Hall concert with hometown sendoff

Before more than 90 Chorale Coeur d’Alene singers take Carnegie Hall in New York City on Memorial Day 2026, North Idaho will get the first hearing. Two hometown concerts at Trinity Lutheran Church will preview the exact program the chorus is carrying to one of the nation’s most symbolic stages.

The concerts, titled Unfolding Horizons, are set for 7 p.m. Friday, May 15, and 2 p.m. Saturday, May 16, at Trinity Lutheran Church, 812 N. Fifth St., Coeur d’Alene. For local audiences, the performances offer a rare chance to hear the music before the ensemble leaves for its Carnegie Hall residency, scheduled for May 22-26 with the New York performance date listed as May 25.

The program carries both weight and novelty. It includes Dan Forrest’s Te Deum, described as a sweeping setting of an ancient hymn, and Richard Smallwood’s Total Praise. The concerts will also feature the world premiere of Patti Drennan’s commissioned work, The Mighty Power of God, along with featured pieces by the chorus’s Young Artist Scholarship winners. That combination puts a new composition, scholarship performers and a nationally recognized venue in the same arc, with Coeur d’Alene hearing the music before it reaches New York.

Chorale Coeur d’Alene says the Carnegie Hall trip marks its 25th anniversary season, titled Past, Present and Future. The organization was founded in 2001, when a small group of singers gathered to build a community chorus from scratch. Its first concerts that fall were performed before a packed 1st Presbyterian Church in Coeur d’Alene, a beginning that now leads to a performance on a far larger stage.

Today, the chorale describes itself as a nonprofit, auditioned community chorus based in Coeur d’Alene with more than 120 singers from across the Inland Northwest. Its volunteers range in age from 16 to 80-plus, and the group says its mission includes bringing sacred and secular choral music to life, involving young people in choral participation and contributing to vibrant community life.

That local identity is part of what makes the Carnegie Hall milestone matter here. Soprano Pat Matson Roland has pointed to the chorus as a place where singers build friendships and find support through seasons of loss, a reminder that the ensemble is more than a performance group. For Kootenai County, the May concerts are a final hometown sendoff for a choir that has grown from a small local experiment into a North Idaho institution headed for Carnegie Hall.