Bridging languages, cultures, and history in transcendental song, Grammy-winning composer Christopher Tin shines as a modern, interdisciplinary master of choral music. From his groundbreaking piece Baba Yetu, a Swahili rendition of The Lord’s Prayer, to innovative concept albums and a new finale to Puccini’s unfinished opera Turandot, Tin has demonstrated time and again that voice holds the power to unite, uplift, and celebrate all of humanity.
On Sunday, May 31 local audiences will have the rare opportunity to listen to their friends and neighbors perform Tin’s empowering compositions guided by the maestro himself when the Santa Barbara Choral Society presents Light & Flight at Trinity Lutheran Church on La Cumbre Road. With tickets still available for the 7 p.m. concert, Tin will be joined by SB Choral Society Artistic Director JoAnne Wasserman to conduct a program of modern choral masterpieces.
“I thought it would be great to do,” shared Tin with VOICE. “I very much like Santa Barbara and it was a nice way for me to get a chance to perform some of my music with a very good group of singers.”
A collaborative choral experience, Choral Society members will team up with singers from the Santa Clarita Master Chorale and the Torrance-based Los Cancioneros Master Chorale to provide a rich, full-bodied choral experience. They will be accompanied by a full orchestra and guest soloists soprano Christina Bristow, tenor Jimmer Bolden, mezzo soprano Becca Clarke, and tenor Felipe Prado-Caceres. Together, they will bring Tin’s beautiful music, including his Turandot ending, to life.
“It is probably the most challenging and daunting commission I ever accepted,” remarked Tin about Turandot, adding with a laugh, “I was a little bit insane for saying yes to it, but I’m never one to shy away from a challenge, I suppose.”
Currently based in Santa Monica, Tin has taken the music world by storm in recent decades. He burst onto the choral scene with his 2005 hit Baba Yetu, which he wrote for the video game Civilization IV. Thoughtful and cheerful, the Swahili prayer song became the first work created for a video game to win a Grammy. Tin has since gone on to compose additional scores for the Civilization games, writing sweeping and dramatic scores to accompany lyrics that pull from epics such as The Iliad and Beowulf.
Tin explained that these experiences have shaped his creative ability to write music in an interdisciplinary way, marrying visuals and music.
“With Baba Yetu, with my other themes for Civilization VI and VII, a lot of how the music emerged was just an instinctual response to the graphics of the game, the visuals of the menu screen, conversations I had with developers,” explained Tin. “I think that when you come up working in the sort of multimedia tradition as I did…you have to write quickly and accurately to the product that you’re adding music to and so you develop these instincts: someone will show you a picture and instinctively a melody will pop in your head.”
In a fun twist of fate, Tin’s video game compositions have also attracted more opportunity than a historic Grammy Award. When Francesca Zambello, the Artistic Director of Washington National Opera, heard her son playing Civilization VI, she was so impressed by its beautiful choral music that she contacted Tin to commission a new ending for Turandot.
After months of research into the opera’s history and Puccini’s musical devices, as well as collaborating with librettist Susan Soon He Stanton, Tin created a dynamic work that has been praised by critics and opera fans alike since its 2024 premiere. Japanese figure skater Yuma Kagiyama even performed to Tin’s Turandot at the 2026 Winter Olympics, sharing the composition with an international audience on the 100th anniversary of the original premiere of Turandot in Milan, the very city where it debuted.
“I think everyone who’s ever tried to complete Turandot will tell you that it is very hard to step into the master’s shoes and every composer has a voice because there are certain instinctual things that we do that are unique to us,” explained Tin. “To betray those instincts is not how we like to work as artists and so ultimately I had to stop trying to think about finishing in Puccini’s voice, but instead focus on writing a piece that was in my own voice that would be a suitable ending to Turandot.”
Pure serendipity also introduced Tin to the Choral Society. A few years ago, Tin was in a sushi restaurant in Los Angeles when he noticed Artistic Director JoAnne Wasserman studying a vocal score of his music at a nearby table. The two struck up a conversation, and Wasserman explained that she was considering performing Tin’s music with her chorus in Santa Barbara.
“It was quite a delightful surprise; I haven’t quite had that exact situation ever happen to me,” said Tin. “It really made my day.”
Tin ended up attending the Choral Society’s concert of his music in 2023 and was struck by the choir’s talent. When Wasserman pitched the idea of a choral collaborative concert to conclude this year’s season, Tin was more than happy to sign on as a guest conductor.
“From my last experience in Santa Barbara, everyone was very nice, and the singers were terrific, and I’m hoping for a repeat of that experience,” said Tin.
On Sunday, Tin will lead the Santa Barbara Choral Society and its partners in performing Baba Yetu and Turandot as well as selections of his other original compositions, including Waloyo Yamoni, a Lango rainmaking prayer that inspired the creation of Tin’s song cycle The Drop That Contained the Sea. His additional albums have included the Grammy-winning Calling All Dawns, To Shiver the Sky, and The Lost Bird.
“I think that every time I tackle a new commission and a new piece, the exact nature of the commission, the exact sort of circumstances I’m in personally and creatively, and the exact nature of the world that we live in sort of influences how I tackle everything,” said Tin. “So it’s always fluid and it’s always changing.”
Sunday’s concert will also feature Artistic Director Wasserman conducting composer Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna, a reflection of themes of light through spiritual Latin texts.
For tickets ($30) visit sbchoral.org
