Since its founding in 2005 by Jesse Mark Peckham, KHORIKOS has gained a reputation for innovative, heartfelt programming and stunning concerts in NYC and worldwide. KHORIKOS has performed music from ten centuries and in over twenty languages, ranging from Hildegard’s 12th-century chant to Gesualdo’s 16th-century subversive counterpoint, to genre-bending vocal music from living composers across the planet.

Under Mr. Peckham's direction, the ensemble toured the Czech Republic, sang the NYC premiere of Eric Whitacre's Nox Aurumque, and performed as a featured guest at the Kennedy Center, Avery Fisher Hall, Merkin Hall, and the Wang Theater, with collaborators including The National Philharmonic, The Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the Indianapolis Children Choir. KHORIKOS was selected to compete in WQXR/WNYC's  "Battle of the Boroughs," and was voted to represent the Borough of Manhattan in competition against rock, funk and indie bands. Still in the first half of its career, KHORIKOS contributed to performances and releases by Shara Nova, Arturo O’Farrill, Robert Carl, Goldfrapp, and more. Under Jesse’s leadership, Khorikos began building collaborative relationships with composers that continue to thrive.

2016 saw a transition in leadership to Alec Galambos, Artistic Director, and Carah Naseem, Administrative Director. The ensemble’s new SAROS: Cycles series revealed expressive connections between early and new music. KHORIKOS continued its ongoing effort to source new music democratically and from all corners of the world with its ORTUS International Music Competition: across four calls-for-scores from 2014-2020, KHORIKOS received and adjudicated over two thousand submissions, giving new life to dozens of underperformed new works.

In the past decade, KHORIKOS has continued touring and sharing its unique repertoire and musicality with audiences in NYC and worldwide, including in appearances at Alice Tully Hall, the Dimenna Center for Classical Music, National Sawdust, (le) Poisson Rouge, at the 2024 Sound Scene Festival at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, and with audiences across the northeast, Chicago, and Milwaukee, and in Serbia and Montenegro as the winners of the 2019 Days of Mokranjac festival in Negotin, Serbia, enjoying acclaim in national TV and print media. KHORIKOS has contributed to performance and recording projects in collaboration with Half-Waif, Charlotte Greve, Piffaro, The Renaissance Band, Karim Douaidy, and more. 

KHORIKOS has recorded and released six full-length albums and one EP (featuring KHORIKOS’s own transcription of Josquin des Prez’s rare Vultum Tuum Deprecabuntur motets). From 2019’s "Joy and Grief and Rest and Home," the group's recording of Thomas Tallis's Sancte Deus was featured in Spotify's Classical New Releases playlist, reaching hundreds of thousands of listeners. KHORIKOS was also featured on BBC Radio by host Dean Craven, in an airing of the ensemble's 2017 performance of composer Katie Bamford's Ecstacy.

In collaboration with Grammy-nominated and Emmy-winning engineer Dan Dzula, KHORIKOS has championed immersive media in relationship with choral music in its pioneering spatial audio projects, 2018’s Vespers 360, 2020’s Tavener 360, and the ensemble’s most recent album, Across the Open Spaces, available on Apple Music in Dolby Atmos.

KHORIKOS has dedicated itself to building deep collaborative relationships with composers, most recently by commissioning and premiering new works from Graham Lack, Kala Pierson, Evelin Seppar, Andrew Smith, Kile Smith, Hilary Purrington, and Ben Zucker, and by premiering new arrangements of works by Sarah Kirkland Snider, Anna Meredith, and more. KHORIKOS has recently instituted more frequent calls-for-scores, in an effort to curate, commission, and cultivate new works as part of every concert project.

For more information about our current projects, visit our Concerts page.