
Handel’s Messiah
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2025
2:00 P.M. (Sold out) & 8:00 P.M. (Sold out)
FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF ASHEVILLE
Darko Butorac, conductor
Jessica Beebe, soprano
Clifton Massey, countertenor
Jacob Perry, tenor
Kenneth Overton, bass
Asheville Symphony Chorus
Celebrate the holiday season with the might and emotional weight of Handel’s iconic Messiah. One of our biggest performances of the season, the Asheville Symphony Chorus shares the stage with four incredible soloists and your Asheville Symphony.
Both performances are SOLD OUT.
Note: Handel’s Messiah is a special holiday program and not part of the 2025-2026 Masterworks Series. Click the button above to purchase tickets or give our box office a call at (828) 254-7046. Box office hours are 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Monday – Friday.
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GUEST ARTISTS SPONSORS
Sarah Van Gunten
Linda and Michael Gilpin
Lauded by Opera News as “evocative and ethereal”, “a honey-colored tone”, and “the most radiant solo singing,” – soprano Jessica Beebe is steadily gaining international attention as an affecting interpreter of repertoire spanning over four centuries, ranging from Renaissance music to contemporary American opera.
Ms. Beebe is a member of GRAMMY winning ensemble The Crossing, GRAMMY nominated Clarion Society, GRAMMY nominated Seraphic Fire, founding member of Variant 6, Lorelei Ensemble, Trio Eos and Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia.
A native of the Philadelphia suburbs, Jessica Beebe earned her Bachelor of Music from the University of Delaware, her Master of Music in Early Music from Indiana University, and a Performance Certificate from London’s Royal College of Music. Ms. Beebe is on faculty at both Franklin and Marshall and Muhlenberg Colleges.
Countertenor Clifton Massey’s wide-ranging repertoire includes an abundance of early music which he performs as both soloist and ensemble singer. The music of Bach has come to play a central role in Clifton’s career, and he has excelled as soloist in the St. Matthew and St. John Passions (Trinity Church Wall Street), the Christmas Oratorio (Oregon Bach Festival), the B Minor Mass (Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra), and over 60 Cantatas. He is a frequent soloist on the “Bach at One” series at St. Paul’s Chapel as well as the Bach Vespers series at Holy Trinity Lutheran church, both in Manhattan.
A skilled chamber musician, he has performed with preeminent ensembles such as Voices of Music, Apollo’s Fire, TENET, Voices of Ascension, Bach Collegium San Diego, Washington Bach Consort, the Folger Consort, and the Clarion Choir. As a member of the Grammy-award-winning group Chanticleer, he sang over 200 concerts in major venues spanning the globe. Clifton has participated in the Ojai Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, Ravinia, and the summer music festivals of Berkeley, Boston, Utrecht, and Staunton, VA. He collaborates frequently with notable early-music ensembles such as the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, and American Classical Orchestra. Most recently Clifton was featured on a favorably reviewed recording with medieval group Concordian Dawn, where his singing was described as “a voice that has a truly unique, special quality, gleaming and incredibly expressive, while capable of the most subtle shadings.”
Clifton is a core member of the professional choir of Trinity Church Wall Street, a vibrant urban church in Lower Manhattan. He holds degrees from TCU and Indiana University’s Historical Performance Institute, where he studied with Paul Hillier and Paul Elliott. In addition to his active performing career, Clifton is the Program Manager for the Organ and Church Music programs at the Yale University Institute of Sacred Music. He also enjoys traveling throughout America, having driven cross country more than 17 times.
Deeply immersed in vocal chamber music, Jacob enjoys active membership in Les Canards Chantants, a soloist-ensemble based in Philadelphia, as well as engagements with ensembles such as Ampersand, Blue Heron, Cathedra, Ensemble Altera, The Leonids, New Consort, Res Facta, and TENET Vocal Artists. He has explored the vocal works by contemporary composers through engagements with Yale Choral Artists, Third Practice, hexaCollective, and Great Noise Ensemble.
Career highlights include his recent solo debut with the New York Philharmonic singing Handel’s “Israel in Egypt”, headlining the inaugural festival of Western Early Music at the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music with Les Canards Chantants, and “English Orpheus”—a tour de force exploration of love songs and poems from the Elizabethan, Restoration, and early 18th-century periods he performed with Tempesta di Mare.
Kenneth Overton is lauded for blending his opulent baritone with magnetic, varied portrayals that seemingly “emanate from deep within body and soul.” Kenneth Overton’s symphonious baritone voice has sent him around the globe, making him one of the most sought-after opera singers of his generation. Kenneth is a 2020 GRAMMY AWARD WINNER for Best Choral Performance in the title role of Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by JoAnn Falletta.
This season, Overton will lead two productions for the Welsh National Opera’s new season. The new work Migrations, and in the world premiere of The Shoemaker. Overton will reprise his most celebrated role in Porgy and Bess as Porgy, co-produced by Opera Carolina and North Carolina Opera. Concert engagements will include Handel’s Messiah at the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel, a concert staging of Porgy and Bess with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in Hamburg, a solo recital for the African American Music Festival at Pennsylvania State University, a solo recital with the Howland Chamber Music Circle, Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen for the Spartanburg Philharmonic, and a return to The Kennedy Center with The Washington Chorus as the soloist for Duruflé’s Requiem and Undine Smith Moore’s Scenes from the Life of a Martyr.
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