When Choruses Collaborate

At its most basic, that might mean several choruses joining forces to perform Beethoven's Ninth with the local symphony orchestra, or an adult chorus inviting a children's chorus to perform Carmina Burana with them.

But choruses display a much broader range than that. Proving once again that music is a great bridge builder, Chorus America members have created an array of innovative programs in collaboration with visual artists, poets, dancers, puppeteers, T'ai Chi masters, historians, religious scholars, garden clubs, senior citizen homes, and housing projects, to name a few. Through these partnerships, choruses have developed ambitious music education programs for children and teachers, annual choral festivals and musical tributes, and one-of-a-kind events aimed at bridging religious, racial, or social divides.

Collaborating Well: Words to the Wise

Successful collaborations don't happen by magic. Chorus America members offer these tips for making them work.   Start where you are. Look at the resources you have and do what seems possible. "You don't want to kill everyone off the first year," says Faith Rynders, formerly of VocalEssence. "Plant the seeds for success so you will want to do it again. Then gradually build up the program."   Get everybody at the table. Energy builds as collaborating groups plan an event together. "Then it's not you pulling all the strings," says Angela Scully, formerly of Singing City. "It is all of the organizations holding up their end of the bargain."   Find the doers in the collaborating organizations. Collaborations are by nature labor intensive. "Get to a person in the organization that when you hang up the phone you know they're going to do what you've asked them to do," says Scully.   Make it a true collaboration. Don't come across as the expert or the "big fish" among "little fish." "Collaboration is more than just singing a piece together," says Stanley Thurston of Heritage Signature Chorale. "Let each choral group express its own musical style so that the groups feel they are on a level playing field."   Build in enough time for preparation. If you're performing a new work jointly, make sure each group has enough time to master it. That may mean that directors go out and work with the other groups in the weeks leading up to the performance.   Make sure you have enough support staff and volunteers. For the Boychoir festival, Frank Cimino recruits dozens of volunteers. "Looking after 300 boys for two days is staggering," he says. "We have one volunteer who does nothing else but coordinate the food."   Track the impact of your collaborative project. Gather empirical data, such as growth of or changes in the demographics of your audience. Have workshop attendees fill out evaluations - and then read them carefully and act on them.

Adding such ambitious projects to a chorus's regular season makes for a full plate, which is why chorus administrators caution not to overlook the word "labor" in the definition of collaboration. But all the time and effort is well worth it, they say. Collaborations are a wonderful way to expand your horizons, to reach new audiences, to educate yourself, your singers, and your community, and to generate good will, not to mention new funding sources.

Sharing Choral Traditions

Some of the most far-reaching and creative collaborations spring from chorus education and outreach programs. These projects flow naturally out of their mission to develop the next generation's musicians and audiences, and perhaps not coincidentally, make good business sense, too. But choruses are expanding the frontiers of school-based programs by embarking on collaborations that educate in less traditional ways.

In one such ambitious effort, Frank Cimino, music director of the Maryland State Boy Choir, created an annual festival in Baltimore for boy choirs from around the country. Now in its fourth year, the Baltimore Boy Choir Festival draws 300-plus boys and their conductors for two days of workshops and musical direction under some of the top choral musicians in the country. Francisco Nunez, artistic director of The Young People's Chorus of New York, will direct the upcoming festival in May 2004. James Litton, former music director of the American Boychoir, is on tap for 2005.

The festival strives to nurture smaller, less experienced boy choirs, in the hopes that they'll go away inspired and feel more a part of the centuries-old boy choir tradition. "There are a lot of festivals that reach out to the top choirs," says Cimino. "I saw this as a way to let boys in smaller choirs have the experience of coming together with a couple of hundred boys - like the choir with just eight singers that came from High Point, North Carolina last year. They go away saying, 'Wow, there are boys singing all over the country. This must be cool then, right?'"

The festival also allows boy choir directors to learn tools of the trade from those who have been in the business longer. And Cimino has dropped the $100 chorus fee, asking choirs to donate whatever they can—local corporations or foundations underwrite the bulk of the expense for the festival. Teachers in every school in Maryland recommend two of their best singers and typically about 40 boys who are not part of boy choirs participate. Some come back to the festival year after year; others have since joined the Maryland State Boychoir. "This is all about creating support systems for boys," says Cimino. "We're not trying to make money from this."

In another effort to bolster the tradition of boys singing, two years ago the Phoenix Bach Choir and the Phoenix Boys Choir joined forces to create an annual "Boys to Men Festival"—a day-long celebration of the male voice. Last year boys from local school choirs had the rare opportunity to rehearse and perform alongside adult singers from the Bach Choir and the alumni group of the Boys Choir, as well as singers from the Grand Canyon Men's Chorale and the Orpheus Male Chorus.

A number of other choral groups also collaborate to bring the choral music experience to underserved children. The Colorado Children's Chorale sponsors a nine-month conservatory, with an emphasis on schools in Denver's disadvantaged neighborhoods that serve diverse ethnic and cultural groups. The Children's Chorus of San Antonio runs a tuition-free choir program called "Project: Sing!" for children in parts of the city not served by the chorus.

Bridging Cultural Divides

A number of creative and deeply moving collaborations have grown out of a desire to bridge the racial, cultural, and religious chasms that divide people. In the emotional and destructive aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, The Choral Arts Society of Washington (CASW) commissioned a local composer to create a choral work honoring King's life and work. The performance, in collaboration with the Howard University Choir, was the first of what later evolved into an annual tribute to Dr. King, showcasing local African-American artists and choral groups. The tribute now encompasses a number of related events, including a pre-concert lecture, performances by local artists on the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage, shortened versions of the tribute performed in local schools, and student essay contests.

Over the past 15 years, some 40 organizations and 10,000 performers have collaborated with Choral Arts to produce the tribute. "It is a performance that raises the roof off the Kennedy Center," says Judy Brophy, executive director of CASW. "To hear 400 voices singing 'Precious Lord,' Martin Luther King's favorite hymn... well, the Concert Hall just doesn't have that kind of emotion all the time. And rarely do you look around the hall and see as many black faces as you do white."

The tribute provides a rare opportunity for singers from very different backgrounds—both ethnic and musical—to learn from each other. "Singers are automatically curious about other groups and how they perform and pull their concerts together," says Stanley Thurston, whose 80-member Heritage Signature Chorale joined CASW for the tribute in 2002. "It's good for our group to hear our music in the context of another group's music. It's a welcoming situation, like being invited over for dinner, like shaking hands."

"Then when you see the groups on stage together," Thurston continues, "you can't help but think of Martin Luther King and the 'I Have a Dream' speech and people holding hands and marching together. That makes a strong impact with the audience."

Heritage's collaboration with CASW has led to opportunities to bridge other kinds of divides. After attending the 2002 tribute, local musician Ramon Tasat asked Thurston to work with his Bountiful Light Choir, which performs contemporary arrangements of Jewish service music. In "Shared Roots and Spiritual Song," presented last season, the two choruses performed pieces from their own traditions and sang together in several joint pieces. Plans are in the works to take the program to New York and Baltimore this season. "It was a total surprise," says Thurston of the collaboration, "but it was the same kind of open, welcoming feeling."

In another effort to build bridges across religion and culture, the Minnesota Chorale will present in May 2004 "Musical Chi: East-West Convergences," a weeklong residency by T'ai Chi master and author Chungliang Al Huang, a longtime devotee of J.S. Bach's choral music and an authority on East-West cultural synthesis, and internationally acclaimed Gao Hong, a virtuoso of the pipa (Chinese lute). The residency will encompass three performances, a public workshop, three full days in area schools, open rehearsals, and other educational activities. The two artists will collaborate with singers of the Minnesota Chorale to explore parallels between music and movement. The project aims to form new bonds between choral music and physical and mental well-being, as cultivated through T'ai Chi and similar practices.

Creating Community Ties

A number of choruses have reached beyond music or arts organizations to collaborate with other community organizations. The Kansas City Chorale worked with a local historical foundation to create "Friends of Sacred Structures," which featured performances of music about historical events in local historic venues and pre-concert talks and photographic exhibitions. In a collaboration with the Kansas City Garden Club, the Chorale programmed music about—yes, flowers! The garden club supplied floral arrangements and information about gardening.

The Glen Ellyn Children's Chorus has found a novel way to expand its community network through its annual music education workshop and concert in collaboration with local music teachers and their students. For the 2003-04 season, "The Song of DuPage" will focus on the history and culture of DuPage County, the community west of Chicago where the chorus operates and where most of its singers live. A local storyteller and Jonathan Miller, artistic director of Chicago a cappella (known for its innovative programming), will serve as guest clinicians for an all-day workshop involving 400 children and 50 to 60 teachers. Two concert performances with the children's chorus and local school children will bring the county's history to life through stories, songs of immigrants, theatrical pieces, dance, and folk music. Unearthing the stories about DuPage has helped create connections with local history museums, historical societies, and families and businesses whose ties to the region go back generations.

The Minnesota Chorale is living up to its mission of "manifesting music as a tool for social change" by presenting benefit concerts in partnership with Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity and two local churches. The concerts, which explore the idea of home and the sense of place, include songs and spirituals by the late Moses Hogan, Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, and "Is There A Place?" from Aaron Jay Kernis' Garden of Light. Prior to the concerts, eight women from the Chorale sang at the dedication of two Habitat homes constructed under the organizations' WomenBuild initiative.

Another unusual community collaboration grew out of a chance meeting between Tom Hall, director of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, and Noam Zion, an orthodox Jewish scholar from the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. In "Scripture and Song"—part lecture, part concert—the two men discuss biblical stories and musical settings of biblical texts around a particular theme. The first "conversation" focused on jealousy and envy, drawing parallels between the story of Saul and David from the Bible and Mozart and Salieri from musical history. Members of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society sang pieces from Mozart and Salieri to illustrate.

"It was a huge hit," Hall says, "so we've been doing it every other year since. It has helped our outreach to the Jewish community, in particular. Our choral society is often seen as an outgrowth of a church choir, quite understandably, since so much of our repertoire is premised in Christian liturgical music and since some of our performances are in churches... We have had many people coming to us for the first time through this event."

Collaborating in a Post-9/11 World

Bridging the divide between religious groups has taken on increased urgency in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. A number of choruses have responded to the challenge through unique collaborative events. Last fall, Singing City in Philadelphia presented Sacred Bridges, a program exploring the role of music in the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist traditions. "Singing City began in 1948 with the idea that the racial divide had to be conquered," says Angela Scully, executive director. "Now we also have a widening religious divide and so we decided we had to do something."

The program, held in a Quaker meeting house, opened with a Muslim Call to Prayer, followed by a Jewish rabbi, a Catholic nun, and a Muslim imam talking about their religious traditions. Musical selections spanned the traditions, from Kaddish to Gospel to Native American. "The audience was very diverse and it was an intensely spiritual experience," said Scully. "The nation was at the edge of war, but we were all there because we believed in a certain set of values, that we could get along, that peace was possible, that indeed music was the bridge."

These kinds of transcendent experiences keep choruses reaching out to collaborate again and again. And the good feelings extend well beyond the performers on the stage. "Our steering committee is a composite of church leaders, CEOs, representatives of arts organizations, members of our board, and singers," says Brophy of CASW's annual Martin Luther King tribute. "These are people coming together under one roof who might not ever be together otherwise. There is so much energy from reaching out and collaborating, so much to be gained, such richness —for choristers, for the board, for everyone involved."

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This article is adapted from The Voice, Winter 2003-2004.