Tarik O’Regan’s Critical Mass: North American Premiere, with Orff’s Carmina Burana

Pacific Chorale opens its 2026–27 season with the North American premiere of Tarik O’Regan’s Critical Mass, co-commissioned with Wimbledon Choral. O’Regan builds a full mass setting around his Agnus Dei, first sung at the 2023 Coronation of King Charles III in Westminster Abbey. He asked four writers, John Caird, Colm Tóibín, Marcus Omari and Alice Goodman, to each write an original text for the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo and Sanctus. They wrote independently, without seeing one another’s work, yet the texts share an arc from fracture and doubt toward light and renewal.

GRAMMY® Award–winning composer Starr Parodi opens the program with the world premiere of I Am America, a Pacific Chorale commission for America’s 250th anniversary. The evening closes with Orff’s Carmina Burana in Paul Leonard Schäffer’s 2022 chamber orchestration, which sharpens the work’s raw, percussive drive.

Robert Istad conducts Pacific Chorale, Pacific Symphony and the Southern California Children’s Chorus.

Arrive early for Before the Downbeat, a free pre-concert conversation with Tarik O’Regan and Starr Parodi, hosted by PBS SoCal’s Maria Hall-Brown, at 6:00 p.m. It’s included with your ticket.