Martin Sedek, Music Director
Carol Walker, Assistant Director

Dr. Martin Sedek has been named the fifth Music Director of Masterwork Chorus, starting September 2024. Learn more about Dr. Sedek here.

Founded in 1955, the non-profit chorus is dedicated to enrich, delight and support the cultural life of the community through high-quality inspiring choral performances.

With three major concerts each year, Masterwork has performed throughout New Jersey as well as Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall and Kennedy Center in Washington. Since 1961, the chorus has returned to Carnegie Hall every year for its signature performance of Handel’s Messiah (the group has performed more than 260 Messiah performances).

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Many singers are long-time members and only four conductors have led Masterwork Chorus since the founding. The Masterwork Chorus is a warm and welcoming group celebrating the joy of music. Everyone is more than welcome.

Masterwork has a small choral chamber ensemble named Women’s Ensemble, an Alumni Association, a community outreach program, informal Summer Sings and ReachOut performances for senior citizens in assisted living and health care centers, patients in hospitals and rehabilitation facilities.

Freedom! Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concert

Masterwork Chorus, with special guests Montclair State University Jazz Band, present an extraordinary and rarely performed sacred oratorio for chorus and jazz band by icon Duke Ellington. A choral oratorio like you’ve never heard before, fans of classical and jazz alike will be blown away by this exuberant and heartfelt masterpiece.

Saturday, March 22, 2025 7:30 pm
Chatham United Methodist Church
Conductor: Martin Sedek

Run time: 60 minutes, no intermission. A complimentary reception will follow.

Beethoven’s Mass in C & Christ on the Mount of Olives

A full professional orchestra and soloists join Masterwork for a performance of two of Beethoven’s most poignant and dramatic works. Though sacred in subject matter, Christ on the Mount of Olives is a humanistic oratorio whose almost operatic emotional weight laid the groundwork for the secular dramatic oratorios that followed.

Soloists:
Seungchan Hong, Baritone
Saturday, May 17, 2025 7:30 pm
The Concert Hall at Drew University
Conductor: Martin Sedek

Run time, 1 hour, 50 minutes including intermission.

The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.

— W.H. Auden