The Thirteen

“Exquisite in every way” (Gramophone), The Thirteen is a professional choir and orchestra based in metropolitan Washington, D.C. with a mission to inspire the soul to sing, move the heart to empathy, and build community, all through groundbreaking musical performance.

The Thirteen is a professional choir and orchestra celebrated for reimagining the potential of vocal music. In our fourteen years of performing works ranging from early chant to world premieres and the centuries in between, we have gained a reputation not only for our “tight and attractive vocal blend and excellent choral discipline” (American Record Guide), but also as clarion voices for our time, “offer[ing] a vivid portrait of a nation still finding its voice” (The Washington Post). By our mission to inspire the soul to sing, move the heart to empathy, and build community through groundbreaking musical performance, we seek to humanize the stories we tell. As the chief music critic of The Washington Post wrote of our New American Songbook program in May 2025, “I wasn’t expecting to have my heart broken.”

We are committed to educating and supporting the next generation of musicians through our Vocal Fellows Program for early career singers who have experienced obstacles in the pursuit of their craft and through robust education programs for students at the high school and collegiate levels in masterclasses, workshops, and collaborative performance sessions.

We have been in residence at Yale University, University of Maryland College Park, Bowling Green State University, Eastern Illinois University, the University of Central Oklahoma, York College, and nearly fifteen more colleges, as well as performing on concert series throughout the United States. In 2018 we were awarded the Greater Washington Area Choral Excellence award for Most Creative Programming.

Our commercial recordings include “Monteverdi: The Lost Vespers of 1650,” Monteverdi’s “Vespers of 1610,” the World Premiere recording of Scott Ordway’s opera, “The Outer Edge of Youth,” “Truth and Fable,” the critically acclaimed Christmas album “Snow on Snow,” “Voice Eternal,” and “Radiant Dark,” which reached #28 on the iTunes Classical Charts.