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The Voice

Chorus America's award-winning quarterly magazine, The Voice, highlights chorus news, artistic initiatives in the choral world, and advice and commentary on the business of running a successful chorus. The Voice is distributed to nearly 2,000 choral leaders throughout North America. It is published in Spring, Summer, and Fall/Winter; ISSN 1074-0805. Browse articles and past issues in the tabs below. Editor, Liza W. Beth

'We live off the beaten path': The Challenges of Finding Great Community Chorus Repertoire

For any chorus, finding the right repertoire can be an imposing task. But the process is especially difficult for community choruses. Why is the search so hard for them, how do they deal with the obstacles, and what more can be done to help these ensembles locate the music that’s right for them?

Community Chorus Repertoire Recommendations

In our Winter 2017-18 issue of The Voice, Chorus America spoke to conductors and publishers about how to address the challenge of finding quality repertoire for community choruses. So what are some specific pieces that these publishers and composers would recommend for these groups? We asked a wide range of publishers and composers in the field to recommend one work from their own catalogue that they felt is especially suited to community choruses. The list we compiled represents a broad spectrum of cultural traditions, orchestrations, and voicings—including links to websites for more information when available.

Welcoming Transgender Singers: Resource List

How can choruses foster a more inclusive culture for transgender singers? This list of resources accompanies our article from the Winter 2017-18 issue of the Voice on welcoming transgender singers.

Welcoming Transgender Singers: Key Terms

In creating a chorus culture that is welcoming to transgender singers, terminology can be something that some choral leaders may need catching up on. This list of key terms below supplements our article in the Winter 2017-18 Voice on making choruses welcoming for transgender singers.

Choral Conductors Today: Responding to a Shifting Career Model

In an effort to renew our understanding of the roles, responsibilities, and challenges choral conductors encounter and how they affect the choral ecosystem, Chorus America undertook a new study, updating survey findings from a decade ago. The results highlight both important challenges and reasons to feel confident about the health of the profession. 

Software that Sings

Choosing the Right Software for Your Chorus

The right process can save your organization a lot of time and money as you select new software. But how do you get started?

How to Build a Development Committee that Rocks!

The viability of every nonprofit chorus depends on the success of its development committee and the effectiveness of the committee chair. With so much riding on this work, how should the board arrange its priorities? Maybe not in the way you’d expect.

Life Lessons from Choral Singers

In addition to enriching musical knowledge and enhancing vocal technique, singing in a chorus can also teach important lessons about life itself. We reached out to the growing network of choruses specifically for older adults, and asked longtime singers about the ways in which singing has informed other aspects of their lives.

Keeping the Choral Singer Pipeline Flowing

Singers are the lifeblood of the choral field. Ensembles from coast to coast are anchored by veterans of school and youth choral programs who found the experience rewarding enough that they continued through adulthood. But as choral leaders know all too well, many choristers can’t or don’t stick with it; they drop out of choral singing when they hit significant life transitions.

Creating a Lifelong Singer

When Susan McMane was in high school, she probably spent about as much time chanting “two, four, six, eight” as she did singing “do, re, mi.” 

A New Career Path for Singers

A growing number of singers are knitting together careers by traveling from city to city to perform with professional choral ensembles. Here’s how this model works for them – and how it impacts the choral field.

An Interview with Vijay Gupta

Vijay Gupta is both a violinist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and a dedicated advocate for the power of music to change lives and reconnect us to our shared humanity. In 2011, he founded Street Symphony, a non-profit organization dedicated to engaging musicians in performance and dialogue with marginalized communities of people experiencing poverty, homelessness and incarceration. 

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