In August 2009, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra release a new commercial recording of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers on the Naxos label. This two-disc set, only the fourth audio recording ever produced of Mass, was recorded at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall on October 21-22, 2008.

Music Director Marin Alsop, a Bernstein protégée, led the BSO and a cast of hundreds in this critically acclaimed, large-scale masterpiece in October 2008. The production consisted of nearly 250 performers, including baritone Jubilant Sykes as the Celebrant, Morgan State University Chorus, the Peabody Children’s Chorus and a stellar Broadway cast of 20 singers performing as the “street people”.  The BSO performed Mass to capacity audiences at Baltimore’s Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., New York City’s Carnegie Hall as a highlight of its citywide festival, Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds, and as part of The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall’s Bernstein Mass Project.

A true American icon, Leonard Bernstein wrote his most eclectic work Mass: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers for the 1971 opening of the Kennedy Center. Though 38 years have passed since its debut, the spiritual and political messages of Bernstein's Mass are still as relevant as ever.

As a tribute to John F. Kennedy, America's first Catholic president, Bernstein chose the elements of the Roman Catholic Mass to represent humankind's search for faith. This monumental work candidly explores what Bernstein called "the crisis of faith" in our time and mixes classical music with a wide range of musical idioms: Broadway, opera, blues, rock, even a marching band!

Jamie Bernstein, daughter of the late composer, attended the New York performances of Mass. “It takes a village to put on Mass—and Marin Alsop has organized her musical village with magnificent results,” said Ms. Bernstein of her reaction to the performances and CD release. “This is a rich, sensitive performance of my father's most personal work: explosive, touching and truly cathartic.”

Browse through the following menu items to learn more about Leonard Bernstein, Mass and the creative “village” that revived one of Bernstein’s most controversial works.

Click here to purchase a CD and experience the masterpiece that critics are calling “…the most musically disciplined and sharply defined performance of Mass I've ever heard” (Musical America). 


Click here to listen to a feature produced for Classical WETA by the Baltimore Symphony. In this interview, Marin Alsop reflects on the significance of Bernstein’s Mass—in the early-70s and today—and speaks with Jamie Bernstein, eldest daughter of the composer, and Baltimore Sun music critic Tim Smith.