About the Great Bend Chorale

The Great Bend Chorale is an award-winning, non-auditioned choral ensemble open to all, age 14 and older, regardless of skill level or training. The ensemble focuses primarily on choral-orchestral programs that are performed in collaboration with professional teaching artists.

Led by Matthew Melendez and launched in the fall of 2017, the Great Bend Chorale quickly established itself. One month after its inaugural performances, the ensemble was invited to make its Carnegie Hall debut. In May of 2019 the Chorale performed its commission “Borders” (a 40-minute choral cantata celebrating the arts and immigration history of the Olympic Peninsula and featuring a Salish song of welcome as its central musical element) to a standing ovation.

In September of 2020, their Shelton, Washington, performance of the work was awarded an American Prize marking it as one of most noteworthy performances of American music in the world that year.

In the fall in 2023, thank in part to a Challenge America award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Great Bend Chorale will revive “Borders” for performances in Seattle, Port Orchard and Olympia, and to make a commercial recording of Muehleisen’s ground-breaking cantata.