THEOTOKOS

Sacred music ensemble

2026-2027 Season

October 10, 2026: The Epic of Gilgamesh. With World Poetry Slam Champion Danny Sherrard. St. Mary’s Church, NYC.

December 17, 2026: Historia Sancti Uldarici (12th. c.) 3rd Thursdays, Rochester, NY

December 19, 2026: Historia Sancti Uldarici (12th. c.) St. Mary’s Church, NYC.

December 31, 2026: Gawain and the Green Knight. The annual performance of the original New Year’s Eve opera.

January 30, 2027: Hildegard/Bernard/Abelard. By popular demand, an expanded version of our monastic concert.

May 29, 2027: Elisa Sutherland carte blanche.

St. Mary’s on Grand St.

Theotokos is a sacred music project devoted to historically-informed yet contemporary interpretations of sacred music from the 9th century to the present day. Founded in 2020, the ensemble is in residence at St. Mary’s Church on the lower east side of New York City. 

Theotokos has given immersive concerts of sacred music in Europe and America. In 2025 they were awarded the Odyssée Residency at the gardens of William Christie in Thiré, France; that same year they performed at the Kloster St-Lioba in Freiburg, Germany. Theotokos has been a featured artist on the Chelsea Music Festival, on Carnegie Hall’s Well-Being Series, and on the Death of Classical concert series in the crypt of St. John the Divine Cathedral. Recent projects have included Telemann’s Harmonischer Dottesdienst cantatas, the sacred madrigals of Marenzio, “The Passion Before Bach”, “Hildegard//Bernard”, and “Music in the Time of Charlemagne”. In October, 2026 Theotokos collaborated with World Poetry Slam Champion Danny Sherrard on a concert version of his rendering of The Epic of Gilgamesh. 

Driven by a special interest in early Christian music, Theotokos has embarked on a multi-year project exploring the neglected historiae of the 9th-15th centuries, in 2025 with Hermann of Reichnau’s Historia Sancti Magni (Working Titles, Chelsea Music Festival, Freiburg) and in 2026 with Udalscalcus’s Historia Sancti Udalrici (Rochester, New York City). 

As a functioning church music ensemble, founder and director Doug Balliett composes new works each week, tailor made for the ensemble’s kaleidoscopic roster, based on and tightly linked with the liturgical readings assigned to that date. In addition, theologically relevant baroque and pre-baroque music is performed in situ during the Mass. 

The passion, historical curiosity, and imagination of the Theotokos project has attracted visiting guests of extraordinary stature and variety, including Davoné Tines, Karim Sulayman, Nicholas Phan, Jessica Niles, Majel Connery, Matt Aucoin, Jean Rondeau, Thomas Dunford, Myriam Rignol, Danny Sherrard, and William Christie, as well as many of NYC’s top choral soloists. In 2021 Theotokos began a fruitful collaboration with the Juilliard School Historical Performance program, in which students are given the opportunity to perform, compose, and experience the sacred music tradition from within.

Theotokos is fiscally sponsored by the Gotham Early Music Society.

Recent (non-mass) performances and events:

October 10, 2026: The Epic of Gilgamesh. NYC, with Danny Sherrard.

August, 2026: Green Box Residency. Green Mountain Falls, CO.

May 28, 2026: Music in the Time of Charlemagne. Midtown Concert series, St. Malachy’s Church

May 21, 2026: St. Mary’s Bicentennial Celebration.

March 28, 2026: Sovereign Stranger: Empress Theophanu and the Greek Mass.

February 26, 2026: Bach, Buxtehude, and Pachabel with Nicholas Phan. Carnegie Hall’s Well-Being Series, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

January 16, 2026: Claude le Jeune’s Octonaire

December 31, 2025: Gawain and the Green Knight.

November 15, 2025: Hildegard/Bernard: Music and Monasticism in the 12th century.

October 8-11, 2025: Relics and Martyrs: Buxtehude, Shaw, and Balliett with The New Consort. Death of Classical Series.

March 13, 2025: Doug Balliett: St. Mark Passion

February 27, 2025: Theotokos @ Thiré France (Odyssée Residency)

February 21, 2025: Hermann of Reichenau at the Kloster St-Lioba (Freiburg, Germany)

January 15, 2025: The Passion before Bach

December 31, 2024: Gawain and the Green Knight

November 24, 2024: Marian Music @ Cold Spring Harbor

November 15 and 17, 2025: Hermann of Reichenau in NYC

March 28, 2024: Marenzio’s Sacred Works

December 31, 2023: Gawain and the Green Knight

December 7, 2023: 5 Boroughs Music Festival: Advent cantatas from Telemann and Balliett

May 25, 2023: Psalms and Saints (with The Chivalrous Crickets)

February 7, 2023: Charpentier’s Leçons de Tenebrae

December 31, 2022: Gawain and the Green Knight

December 29, 2022: Midtown concerts: Cantatas from the Harmonischer Gottesdienst