The San Francisco Choral Society (SF Choral) is a nonprofit organization comprising 150-200 auditioned, volunteer singers dedicated to the performance of choral masterpieces and commissioned works, and accompanied by professional orchestras and soloists. The performance schedule includes two concerts each in spring, summer, and fall, and an annual holiday concert and singalong.
Some of the works that SF Choral has performed include Requiems by Brahms, Mozart, Duruflé, and Verdi; Britten's War Requiem; the Bach B-minor, the Mozart C-minor, and Masses by Bruckner, and Stravinsky; Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass, Handel's Messiah and Israel in Egypt; Mendelssohn's Elijah; Vespers by Monteverdi and Rachmaninoff; Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, and Orff's Carmina Burana. SF Choral has sung pieces by living composers, including Morten Lauridsen, Arvo Pärt, Kirke Mechem, Karl Jenkins, and then-living composer Moses Hogan. And the chorus has commissioned and premiered new works by composers Felicia Sandler, Kirstina Rasmussen, Emma Lou Diemer, Mark Winges, and Donald McCullough.
SF Choral provides Bay Area high school students with the opportunity to participate in rehearsals and performances at no cost to them. The corporately funded Tickets for Kids program offers free tickets to performances for both junior and high school students. [1] The San Francisco Choral Society offers complimentary tickets to selected Bay Area nonprofit organizations for distribution to staff and those they serve.
The Harvard–Radcliffe Collegium Musicum is a mixed chorus at Harvard University, composed of roughly 50 voices from undergraduate and graduate student populations. Founded in 1971 to coincide with the coeducational merger of Harvard and Radcliffe College, Collegium drew from members of the Harvard Glee Club and the Radcliffe Choral Society to form a smaller mixed group that could represent Harvard on tours. Although Collegium used to perform primarily early Renaissance music, its repertoire now draws from centuries of a cappella and orchestral selections. Together with the (tenor-bass) Harvard Glee Club and the (soprano-alto) Radcliffe Choral Society, it is a member of the Harvard Choruses.
Margaret Eleanor Hillis was an American conductor. She was the founder and first director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus.
Conducted by Dr. Kent Hatteberg, the Collegiate Chorale is the premiere choral ensemble at the University of Louisville. The Chorale performs primarily unaccompanied repertoire and is known to commission works by Lithuanian composers Vytautas Miškinis and Vaclovas Augustinas. The Chorale enjoyed rising popularity in the late 1990s and now performs regularly at national choral events around the United States with a large following.
The Swansea Philharmonic Choir is a mixed choir based in Swansea, Wales. It performs with 76 members.
Melinda O'Neal is a conductor of choral and choral-orchestral music, professor emerita of music, and author.
Kent Tritle is a choral conductor and organist in New York City, United States. He is the current director of the professional chorus Musica Sacra and of the Oratorio Society of New York, and director of cathedral music and organist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. He is a concert organist, including organist of the New York Philharmonic and the American Symphony Orchestra. He has been Director of Choral Activities at the Manhattan School of Music, and on the graduate faculty of the Juilliard School.
Emma Lou Diemer is an American composer.
Pacific Edge Voices is a volunteer choral organization based in Berkeley, CA. The group was formed to provide a chorus of professional quality for highly skilled and experienced singers who did not wish to make singing a full-time profession. It was to be large enough to perform the major concert literature, but small enough to remain highly selective. PEV presents a wide range of choral musical styles, including, but not limited to, traditional choral literature, new works by contemporary composers and a cappella jazz and pop. PEV performs at least three self-produced concerts sets each year, along with various collaborations, often with prominent artists including Dave Brubeck, Meredith Monk, Kent Nagano & Sufjan Stevens. The first and second concerts of the year are classically oriented programs. Over the years these programs have tended toward 20th-century composers. The chorus has become known around the San Francisco Bay Area for its innovative programming. A particular highlight came in 2002 when the chorus performed Kurt Weill’s Der Lindberghflug alongside works by Philip Glass, Meredith Monk and David Lang. The concert was presented in the East Bay on the aircraft carrier Hornet and in San Francisco in the newly constructed Aviation Museum at SFO. The 3rd concert set each year is an all a cappella ‘pops’ concert featuring the group in various formations from 2 up to 50, performing arrangements of jazz, pop, rock, & folk tunes.
The American Bach Soloists (ABS) is an American baroque orchestra based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The orchestra was founded in Belvedere, California in 1989. Performers share music from Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries during the Classical era, including Handel, Vivaldi, and Mozart, with modern audiences.
The Philharmonia Chorus is an independent self-governing symphony chorus based in London, UK. Since its foundation in 1957 the Chorus has given over 900 concerts and made over 100 recordings. The Chorus Master is Gavin Carr.
London Concert Choir (LCC) is one of London's leading amateur choirs. The choir was formed in 1960, and the full-time membership consists of ca 150 singers of a wide range of ages.
The International Orange Chorale of San Francisco (IOCSF) is an auditioned all-volunteer chamber choir devoted to performing established repertoire of all periods, with particular attention to 20th-century music—including newly commissioned works of promising composers. Since its inception, the group has been committed to performing free concerts featuring challenging and imaginative choral a cappella programming. The ensemble is based in San Francisco.
Masterworks Chorale is a choral ensemble based in San Mateo, California.
Volti is a 16- to 24-person professional vocal ensemble based in San Francisco, focused on the commissioning and performance of new music. In 2018, Volti became the first vocal group ever to have been awarded the Chorus America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming seven times. Volti has released four CDs on the innova label: "Turn the Page," "House of Voices," "This is what happened," and "the color of there seen from here," released April 26, 2019. Volti also appears with the Kronos Quartet on their Grammy Award winning recording of Sun Rings by American minimalist composer Terry Riley.
Golden Gate Men's Chorus (GGMC) is a gay men's chorus founded in 1982 and located in San Francisco. The GGMC is a group of 50 ethnically and socially diverse gay and gay-supportive men, and is dedicated to giving voice to the gay community through song. The GGMC presents spring, summer, and winter programs annually, in addition to numerous guest and community benefit performances throughout the year.
Gabriel Dessauer is a German cantor, concert organist, and academic. He was responsible for the church music at St. Bonifatius, Wiesbaden from 1981 to 2021, conducting the Chor von St. Bonifatius until 2018. He is an internationally-known organ recitalist, and was an organ teacher on the faculty of the Hochschule für Musik Mainz. In 1985, he founded the German-English project choir, Reger-Chor. He has lectured at international conferences, especially about the music of Max Reger, who was a member of the St. Bonifatius parish.
Redwood Symphony is an American orchestra based in Redwood City, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is the Orchestra in Residence at Cañada College. Redwood Symphony is an all-volunteer orchestra dedicated to the creation of an alternative model of the symphony orchestra in the 21st century. To accomplish this goal, the orchestra concentrates on ambitious, contemporary repertoire, experiments with the concert format and adopts a more informal mode of dress than most other groups. Notable accomplishments are performances of all of the symphonies of Gustav Mahler and many world and local premieres.
The Chor von St. Bonifatius is a German mixed choir, the church choir of the parish St. Bonifatius, Wiesbaden. It was founded in 1862 as a male choir and was a mixed choir from 1887. From 1981 to 2018, it was conducted by Gabriel Dessauer, who founded two children's choirs. The group sang the first performance in Germany of John Rutter's Mass of the Children and performed in Azkoitia, San Sebastián, Görlitz, Bruges, Macon and Rome. Colin Mawby composed for the choir the Missa solemnis Bonifatius-Messe for the 150th anniversary, celebrated on 3 October 2012. From 2019, the choir has been conducted by Roman Twardy who conducted in his first concert Dvořák's Stabat Mater.
Dr. Kathleen Alison McGuire is a choral and orchestral conductor, arranger, composer, music educator, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. Known also for her work with social justice and human rights organizations, from 2000 to 2010 she served as the first female artistic director and conductor of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus – the world's first openly gay choral organization – and in 2010 she established Singers of the Street: a choir of people affected by homelessness in San Francisco. She became a US citizen in 2011 and in 2013 returned to Australia to serve as director of music at Queen's College and co-artistic director of the School of Hard Knocks. In 2006 she was a grand marshal in the San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade. Her contributions have officially been recognized by the California Senate and State Assembly, and "Kathleen McGuire Day" was designated twice in her honor by San Francisco mayors Gavin Newsom and Edwin Lee.
Ming Luke is a versatile American conductor who is the Principal Guest Conductor of the San Francisco Ballet, Principal Conductor of the Nashville Ballet, founder and Program Director of Festival Napa Valley's Blackburn Music Academy, Music Director of the Merced Symphony, Music Director of the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra, and Education Director and Conductor of the Berkeley Symphony