The Houston Chamber Choir is taking listeners from the Lone Star State to the Golden State with California Gold this weekend. The program includes works by Eric Whitacre, Morten Lauridsen, John Cage and the choir’s first performance of Mass by Igor Stravinsky. The concert takes place at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at South Main Baptist Church.

Guest conductor Betsy Cook Weber eked out some time from her schedule to speak with Houston Press about the upcoming program and what guests can expect.

“Anytime I create a program, I look first for a centerpiece,” Cook Weber said. “The piece I was really interested in doing was Stravinsky’s mass. It's so interesting to me he wrote that mass while living in Los Angeles, and then the more I thought about it, there's a wealth of choral music that came out of California from that World War II era to today.”

Cook Weber started piecing the concert together using only California composers when she realized California Gold is going to be a pretty nifty program.

“It's a little bit ironic because I am a really snobby Texan. I’m a native Texan, and I kind of hate to admit that any other state might be our equal or perhaps even have surpassed us in any way,” she said. “So, it’s a little ironic that I'm featuring California composers on this concert, but I do think it's going to be a wonderful, interesting concert for our audience.”

Stravinsky, who is the centerpiece of the concert, composed "Mass" between 1944 and 1948. This setting of the Roman Catholic mass exhibits the austere aesthetic that characterizes his work from the 1920s to 1950s. The Mass also represents one of only a handful of extant pieces by Stravinsky that was not commissioned.

“The whole piece is austere and fair,” Cook Weber said. “It almost feels unemotional. I think Stravinsky wanted it to be, superficially at least, unemotional. It's really interesting. It's quite a difficult piece, and the choir just sounds beautiful on it.” The performance sets the stage for Cook Weber, who was recently announced as the successor to Robert Simpson when he plans to retire after the 2024-25 season – the Houston Chamber Choir’s 30th season.

Eagle-eyed viewers and fans of choral performance will recognize Cook Weber's name from her work with the University of Houston’s choral department as well as the Houston Symphony Chorus. Others who don’t know her work are sure to get a glimpse of what is to come.

“I'm spending a lot of time just thinking about what my tenure should look like. Robert Simpson and I are very, very much on the same page aesthetically and artistically. I have always loved the sound of the chamber choir, and I think just simply building on what he has accomplished would be a remarkable feat,” she said.

“I hope to build on his legacy. There's nothing to improve. There's nothing to change. in my view. I think my programming will be a little bit different. I think inevitably the sound I get from the chorus will be a little bit different, but I hope that the audience and the singers will sense a seamless transition.”

Simpson is a quite tall and hard act to follow, but Cook Weber has the chops to fill those shoes. This weekend’s performance will be the amuse bouche in expectation of what will happen when Cook Weber eventually is handed artistic control over the organization’s future.

Houston Chamber Choir’s California Gold will take place at at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at South Main Baptist Church, 4100 Main. For tickets or more information, visit houstonchamberchoir.org. $10 - $45. Livestream tickets are available for $25.