Sonus Chamber Choir Announces Give Me Your Stars to Hold, a Free Multimedia Concert Experience Featuring Two World Premieres
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:Kolby Van Camp Artistic Director, Sonus Chamber Choir
director@sonusks.org | +1 (785) 806-0882 | https://sonusks.org
TOPEKA, Kan. (June 15, 2026) — Sonus Chamber Choir has announced Give Me Your Stars to Hold, a free multimedia choral concert experience featuring two significant world premiere performances and supported in part by grants from the Greater Manhattan Community Foundation’s Deihl Arts & Humanities Fund and ArtsTopeka.
The grants were awarded to Sonus Chamber Choir to support this portion of the organization’s concert season and the recording of substantial new music featured in the concert repertoire. Grant support and other private funding have helped make it possible for the organization to offer free admission to the public for both concerts.
Guests are encouraged to reserve free general admission tickets online in advance so Sonus Chamber Choir can prepare appropriately for each performance. Free tickets may also be reserved at the door as seating allows.
Give Me Your Stars to Hold will pair live choral performance with visual media, educational collaboration, and immersive storytelling to create an evening shaped by light, space, sound, and wonder. The concert is designed to do what music does best: offer a beautiful escape from the drudgery of daily life while reacquainting listeners with one of humanity’s most ancient rituals in looking up in awe at the expanse of the night sky.
A multimedia meditation of the night sky
Through music inspired by stars, distance, memory, and cosmic beauty, Give Me Your Stars to Hold invites audiences to look both upward and inward. The program explores the night sky not only as a source of beauty, but as a shared human inheritance; one increasingly threatened by light pollution, environmental change, and the rhythms of modern life that so often separate people from the natural world.
The multimedia elements of the concert will deepen that experience, surrounding the live choral performance with visual media connected to the stars, the cosmos, and the fragile visibility of the night sky. Sonus Chamber Choir is also collaborating with local academic institutions to strengthen the educational nature of the concert, connecting the artistic experience with broader conversations about astronomy, environmental awareness, and humanity’s enduring relationship with the heavens.
“At its heart, Give Me Your Stars to Hold is about awe,” said Kolby Van Camp, Artistic Director and Founder of Sonus Chamber Choir. “It is about stepping away from the noise of daily life and remembering that human beings have always looked to the sky for meaning, comfort, imagination, and perspective. The night sky belongs to all of us, but it is also something we are losing access to. This concert is our way of inviting people to experience that wonder again through music.”
A major investment in new music and public access
At the center of Give Me Your Stars to Hold are two significant world premiere performances.
Sonus Chamber Choir will present Musica Universalis by composer-in-residence Jesse Kaiser, a large-scale, multi-movement work written for the ensemble. The composition draws on the ancient idea of cosmic harmony, often described as the “music of the spheres,” and serves as one of the central artistic statements of the program.
The concert will also feature the world premiere of Horizon by Kansas composer Aiden Levendofsky. The work was selected as the third and final winner of Sonus Chamber Choir’s Voices of the Prairie call-for-scores composition competition, an initiative created to support the development and performance of new choral music.
“Give Me Your Stars to Hold represents so much of what Sonus Chamber Choir exists to do,” said Van Camp. “This program brings together new music, multimedia storytelling, Kansas artists, and professional choral performance in a way that feels both expansive and deeply personal. It is about the stars, certainly, but it is also about memory, distance, beauty, grief, hope, and the meaning we search for beneath them.”
The $18,000 grant from the Deihl Arts & Humanities Fund provides meaningful support for both the live concert experience and the recording of substantial new music in the program. For Sonus Chamber Choir, the award represents a major step forward in the organization’s mission to commission, perform, record, and preserve contemporary choral works.
“These grants are transformational for this part of our season,” Van Camp said. “It allows Sonus Chamber Choir to present ambitious new music, make these concerts accessible to the public, and commit resources toward recording works that deserve to live beyond a single performance. That is central to who we are as an organization.”
The inclusion of Musica Universalis marks another major collaboration between Sonus Chamber Choir and Kaiser, whose role as composer-in-residence continues to shape the ensemble’s commitment to commissioning, developing, and performing new works.
“Jesse Kaiser’s Musica Universalis is a major addition to the work of this ensemble,” Van Camp said. “It is ambitious, imaginative, and deeply connected to the larger artistic vision of this concert. Pairing that with Aiden Levendofsky’s Horizon, the final winning work from Voices of the Prairie, allows us to present a program that is not only deeply Kansan and about beauty and wonder, but also about the future of choral music.”
Following each concert, guests are invited to continue the evening with a post-concert meet-and-greet featuring the artists, complimentary hors d’oeuvres, and non-alcoholic drinks.
“Because of this generous grant support, we are able to remove the barrier of paid admission while still treating this concert season and recording project with the seriousness it deserves,” Van Camp added. “We want people to experience this music, meet the artists, and feel welcomed into the work Sonus Chamber Choir is building. Reserving tickets in advance helps us prepare well, but the goal is simple, we want people in the room.”
Two concerts of the same repertoire will be given, one in Topeka at the Great Overland Station on August 1, and one in Manhattan at the Flint Hills Discovery Center on August 2. Both concerts will be at 7pm. Tickets will be available for free reservation on July 1, 2026 and can be acquired at sonusks.org/concerts.
About Sonus Chamber Choir
Sonus Chamber Choir is a professional vocal ensemble and 501(c)3 non-profit arts organization based in Topeka, Kansas. The ensemble focuses on recording and performing contemporary choral works, with particular attention to clarity of sound, structural integrity, and thoughtful engagement with the choral tradition. Through professional recordings and live performance, Sonus Chamber Choir contributes to the ongoing development and preservation of modern choral literature.