Choral Festival

77th J. Elwood Roberts Mars Hill University Choral Festival is Friday and Saturday, February 6 and 7, 2026. Guest clinician/conductor is Dr. Edith A. Copley, a regents’ professor emerita at Northern Arizona University.  The closing concert is Saturday at 3 p.m. in Moore Auditorium and is free and open to the public.

The J. Elwood Roberts – Mars Hill University Choral Festival was established in 1949 by the late J. Elwood Roberts as an effort to improve choral music in the high schools of western North Carolina. While in the beginning the “clinic” was comprised of about fifteen schools in the closely-surrounding area, this annual event has grown into one of the premiere choral festivals in North Carolina and, prior to COVID, was the longest, continuously-running festival of its type in the southeast. Each year over 800 students from approximately 100 high schools audition for the Festival Choir.