Taylor Festival Choir
This release—the Taylor Festival Choir’s second album for Delos—features original Christmas works by two distinguished American composers: Brian Galante and Stephen Paulus. The two multi-movement works presented in this album — Galante’s So Hallow’d the Time and Paulus’s Christmas Dances — are heard here in world premiere recordings.
With this album, Taylor Music Group and Delos offers lovely, skillfully rendered and ear-grabbing accounts of two very different and profoundly spiritual treatments of the Catholic Mass by Irish composer Michael McGlynn and the Scottish master Sir James MacMillan.
Recorded by MSR Classics, this CD features the semi-professional chamber choir Taylor Festival Choir and legendary guest artists Liz Carroll, John Doyle and Kim Robertson. Audio Society of Atlanta called it "a choral feast that will linger long in your memory after you've heard it." It plays frequently on Sirius XM radio.
Live in Concert 2024
Rachmaninoff’s All Night Vigil (Vespers) at Circular Congregational Church
Soloists: Maria Miller - soprano, Cody Müller - bass, Bates O’Neal - tenor, David Tayloe - tenor
About the Taylor Festival Choir
Composers in Residence
Who we Are
The Taylor Festival Choir (TFC) is a professional chamber choir based in beautiful Charleston, SC. Founded and conducted by Rob Taylor, the choir is inspired by the lives and careers of his parents Bob and Cornelia Taylor, venerated music educators in their home state of Arkansas. Founded in 2001 and fully professional since 2015, the Taylor Festival Choir has toured and been heard in prestigious venues and festivals throughout the United States, Ireland, and the UK, and has garnered a reputation of excellence among critics and choral specialists alike. TFC has been featured in multiple American Choral Directors Association Conferences, including the 50th-anniversary celebration and National Conference in 2009, and this year’s 2025 conference in Dallas.
TFC is part of the Taylor Music Group, a 501c3 non-profit arts organization that supports both classical and folk music. It presents a full concert season in the Charleston area, and served as the flagship ensemble for the Piccolo Spoleto Celtic and Classical Arts Series for over 15 years. TFC has recorded with PARMA/Navona Recordings, Delos Recordings, MSR Classics, and Centaur Records – and has received rave reviews from periodicals such as American Record Guide, Fanfare Magazine, Crescendo Magazine, MusicWeb International. Personnel in the ensemble are conductors, performers, and professionals from throughout the United States. The Taylor Festival Choir performs the finest choral literature from all eras, medieval to modern, with particular emphasis on new music. It has collaborated with and commissioned esteemed composers such as Stephen Paulus, Trevor Weston, Michael McGlynn, David Maves, Edward Hart, Karen Marolli, and TFC’s two Composers in Residence Brian Galante and Chelsea Loew.
TFC also performs folk music from the Celtic nations, frequently collaborating with Mary Taylor’s Celtic ensemble Na Fidléirí Reimagined, as well as Irish and Scottish traditional legends such as John Doyle, Liz Carroll, Kim Robertson, and others. The TFC is dedicated to bringing the beauty and spiritual enrichment of choral music to as wide an audience as possible, and is currently involved in the Taylor Music Group’s “Pathways to Healing Initiative,” an initiative dedicated to using the medium of music in the healing of body, mind and spirit. Our next album will bear the title “Pathways to Healing,” and is scheduled for a fall release on PARMA/Navona Recordings.
“Simply one of the best choirs in the country”
“An outstanding choir, which sings with arresting tonal beauty, balance and blend.”
“NO WONDER the Taylor Festival Choir has such a stellar reputation. Their concentration, their precision, their passion, and, above all, their unity of sound are unsurpassed.”
Soprano
Alto
Tenor
Bass
