The Dessoff Choirs is set to begin its 94th season with Requiem for Whitman.

The concert, inspired by the American poet and journalist Walt Whitman, will showcase music by Bach, Schuman, Pizzetti, as well as the world premiere of a newly commissioned Whitman-inspired work by contemporary composer Douglas Geers.

The program will include William Schuman’s “The Carols of Death,” a short a cappella piece with Whitman’s poems at the center of it, and Bach’s funeral motet, “Fürchte dichnicht,” BWV 228. It will also include Messa di Requiem by Ildebrando Pizzetti.

Before the showcase, there will be a pre-concert talk by renowned Whitman scholar Karen Karbiener, Ph.D., Clinical Professor at New York University and co-director of the 2019 Whitman Consortium.

The concert will be held on Nov. 11, 2018, at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral.