The Mendelssohn Club Choir mounted its biggest-ever production last April, 2014 with the premiere of Anthracite Fields by the cutting-edge composer Julia Wolfe, who is exploring the coal-mining culture in her Pennsylvania roots. The Philadelphia Inquirer's David Patrick Stearns met with her...inside a coal mine.
Update:
[BREAKING NEWS: Julia Wolfe has won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music for Anthracite Fields. The Pulitzer jury described the piece as "a powerful oratorio for chorus and sextet evoking Pennsylvania coal-mining life around the turn of the 20th century." The hour-long work was commissioned by the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, which gave the world premiere, along with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, April 26, 2014 in Philadelphia.]
Read the detailed program notes from the world-premiere concerts in 2014