Easter Sunday 2026

Celebrate Easter Sunday at All Souls! Our Easter service features our choir with organ, brass and timpani in a radiant, full-scale musical celebration and a sermon by Rev. Elaine Peresluha. All are welcome! We recommend you arrive early, as the pews tend to fill up. Overflow seating in the Vestibule. There are activities for children Ages 5-18 on the lower level, please check your child in with our Religious Education staff before dropping them off. Nursery care for children ages 6-months to 5 years is available in the Sanctuary.

The service opens with Fanfare for All Souls by highly acclaimed American composer Joan Tower (b. 1938), commissioned to celebrate All Souls bicentennial and premiered on Easter Sunday, April 17, 2022 at All Souls NYC. Joan Tower is the great-granddaughter of the illustrious Henry Whitney Bellows, who served as Senior Minister of All Souls for over four decades.

At the center of the service is the Finale from Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” by Gustav Mahler. This movement is one of the largest-scale statements in symphonic literature, moving from near-silence to overwhelming full ensemble forces, a resplendent and universal affirmation of life beyond death.

A new addition to our Easter programming, Lux Aeterna by Edward Elgar adapts the “Nimrod” variation from the Enigma Variations into an achingly beautiful choral setting of the Latin text.

The service also features Vaughan William’s raucously joyful Antiphon, Handel’s evergreen Hallelujah Chorus, and the virtuosic Toccata from Symphony No. 5 by Charles-Marie Widor