The Esoterics

05/16/2026

Sneak preview ahead of our concert this weekend! Come hear RITES & RESISTANCE, music composed by .mack.92.

🗓️ May 16th at 8pm — Plymouth United Church of Christ, Seattle
🗓️ May 17th at 3pm — Christ Episcopal Church, Tacoma
🎟️ Tickets and more info in bio or at at theesoterics.org/next

05/15/2026

This weekend! Join The Esoterics for RITES & RESISTANCE. -

Dear friends, Tara Mack is here!  We had a fantastic rehearsal with her on Wednesday night, and are truly looking forward to sharing her music with you. It's not too late to grab your tickets!  Just click on the buttons above or below this message to purchase them at BetterWorld. I also wanted to ...

05/15/2026

We are very excited to host Tara Mack here in Seattle for the concert this upcoming weekend! Her music brings timely themes of community, resilience, resistance, and love and hope. The Esoterics are very excited for you to hear it!

🗓️ May 16th at 8pm — Plymouth United Church of Christ, Seattle
🗓️ May 17th at 3pm — Christ Episcopal Church, Tacoma
🎟️ Tickets and more info at theesoterics.org/next

05/13/2026

The imagination of a child, wrapped in adventure and unwilling to succumb to sleep, is a rite of passage. Parents will know the excuses and the sounds of play when a child is meant to be sleeping. This is the story that Barbara DaCosta tells in her children’s book, “Nighttime Ninja.” “I am not done with my mission yet!” is the exclamation from the child in the story, much to exasperated dismay of his mother.

Composer .mack.92 has set this story to song. In the choral parts, you can hear the discourse and bargaining between the child and his mother. Until finally, the child is coaxed back into bed: “Sweet dreams nighttime ninja. Sweet dreams.”

Come hear it for yourself this weekend!

🗓️ May 16th at 8pm — Plymouth United Church of Christ, Seattle
🗓️ May 17th at 3pm — Christ Episcopal Church, Tacoma
🎟️ Tickets and more info at theesoterics.org/next

MusicAndJustice

05/10/2026

How do we face and accept truth when shade and deception is cast wide and accepted by many? This is the question Gwendolyn Brooks posed in her poem “Truth.” Today, deception is often used to both manipulate and ensure conformance. Yet when truth comes, fear and panic can cast us back into the comfort of shade. Tara Mack’s choral setting seeks to cast daylight on the present day through music, inspiring us to ask ourselves if truth came knocking, would we turn away from it?

Come hear it for yourself this upcoming weekend sung by The Esoterics!

🗓️ May 16th at 8pm — Plymouth United Church of Christ, Seattle
🗓️ May 17th at 3pm — Christ Episcopal Church, Tacoma
🎟️ Tickets and more info at theesoterics.org/next

Image credit: Thomas Quine, Flickr

05/06/2026

TODAY is GiveBIG, a day for Washington to show up for the organizations that matter! No matter the size of your support, your generosity is what allows us to create without cutting corners: to develop, hone, and share music we're truly proud of. If The Esoterics means something to you, we'd be so grateful for your support. Thank you!

www.wagives.org/organization/The-Esoterics

05/05/2026

GiveBIG is May 5, a day for Washington to show up for the organizations that matter. In a time of arts defunding and threats to the values that bring us together, we have kept singing, bringing the work of remarkable, lesser-heard composers and new music to our community.

Your generosity is what allows us to create without cutting corners: to develop, hone, and share music we're truly proud of. If The Esoterics means something to you, we'd be so grateful for your support. Thank you!

www.wagives.org/organization/The-Esoterics

05/02/2026

Next week: GIVE BIG, and in two weeks: join The Esoterics for RITES & RESISTANCE! -

Dear friends, I'm sending out this email for two reasons - to remind you of next week's GiveBig campaign, and to tell you about our RITES & RESISTANCE concert that is just two weeks away! I know that this is one of several emails that you will receive this week about GiveBig, and I hope that you wil...

04/22/2026

In light of such times of threats to civil liberties, peace, kindness, and human dignity, The Esoterics presents RITES & RESISTANCE this May.

This concert features new choral works by Tara Mack — composer, singer, and journalist — setting the words of Frederick Douglass, Fannie Lou Hamer, bell hooks, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Langston Hughes to voice.

Her cycle Virtues of Resistance moves through Faith, Anger, Courage, Community, Love, and Joy, drawn from the struggles for emancipation, suffrage, and human rights. And amid such songs in this concert, moments of tenderness: “Good morning” and “Nighttime ninja” capture the quiet wonder of childhood imagination.

The night closes with the world premiere of Island, commissioned by The Esoterics, with audience singing and participation.

We are so happy to welcome Tara to Seattle for the weekend of these concerts! Please join us for a concert of rhymes, romance, risks, and rage.

🗓️ May 16th at 8pm — Plymouth United Church of Christ, Seattle
🗓️ May 17th at 3pm — Christ Episcopal Church, Tacoma
🎟️ Tickets and more info at theesoterics.org/next

12/29/2025

An end-of-year message from Founding Director, Eric Banks -

Dear friends, The Esoterics’ 32nd season began in March of this year with ORBIT & ORACLE, our epic concert of astronomical music by German composer Michael Ostrzyga. In May, we performed a program called PROMISE & PROPHECY, and enjoyed the company of our friend, New York composer Martha Sulliva...