Civic Engagement and Community Outreach have been used so interchangeably in our tagging that we propose using one tag: "Community Engagement" instead
An expert in audience development and diversification, Donna Walker-Kuhne has devoted her professional career to increasing access to the arts. In advance of her keynote plenary on “Dynamic Community Engagement” at Chorus America’s Conference in Cincinnati, she spoke with president and CEO Catherine Dehoney about how the conversation around community engagement has changed—and the opportunities this creates for choruses to “roll up their sleeves and dig in.”
“There are so many commonalities between directing a community choir and the church music experience,” says Tom Dooling of First Presbyterian Church San Antonio.
As a graduate conducting student at Temple University in the 1980s, Diana V. Saez recalls being frustrated that there was no mention of Latin American composers—except for the famous composers Villalobos from Brazil and Ginastera from Argentina. When she moved to Washington DC, in 1990, she found a bustling choral music scene, with a wide variety of choruses. But Latin American music was not part of the standard repertoire.
How does a chorus's legacy continue after its visionary founder is no longer around? It takes the will of a community.
Choral music has a unique power to touch hearts and souls – but how can choruses leverage that power to impact their communities? These four stories provide some answers.
In preparation for publishing a series of community engagement case studies, we asked our members to share their own experiences with community engagement. The responses we received represent choruses of many types and sizes, from all over North America. They show the many different ways choruses are leveraging the power of choral music to impact their communities.
The people who would love to come to your next concert are out there. But it will require more than just more advertising or deeper discounts to find them and bring them into the fold. Arts consultant Matt Lehrman explains.
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New choral programs are embracing Venezuela's El Sistema model to reach children in America's underserved neighborhoods.
Each month, Chorus America has been profiling one of our members in our new Meet A Member series. For December, to mark the season of giving, we changed things up a little bit and interviewed one of Chorus America's long-time donors: Greg Funfgeld, artistic director of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem.
Lorenzo Martinez wasn’t expecting to become the executive director of the Houston Chamber Choir, but his new job is, in a sense, a homecoming. “I feel extremely fortunate to have landed here and work with incredible people,” says Martinez.
