A choir is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which spans from the medieval era to the present, or popular music repertoire. Most choirs are led by a conductor, who leads the performances with arm, hand, and facial gestures.
Bella Voce is a Chicago-based chamber chorus specializing in classical a cappella music. It has been called "Chicago's premier professional chamber choir."
The Harvard Glee Club is a 60-voice, Tenor-Bass choral ensemble at Harvard University. Founded in 1858 in the tradition of English and American glee clubs, it is the oldest collegiate chorus in the United States. The Glee Club is part of the Harvard Choruses of Harvard University, which also include the treble voice Radcliffe Choral Society and the mixed-voice Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum. All three groups are led by Harvard's current Director of Choral Activities Andrew Gregory Clark.
The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, is a music conservatory established in 1921. Until 2005, it was known as the Indiana University School of Music. It has more than 1,500 students, approximately half of whom are undergraduates, with the second largest enrollment of all music schools accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music.
The Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music is the music and performance arts school of Northwestern University. It is located on Northwestern University's campus in Evanston, Illinois, United States.
AMASONG is a GLAMA- winning lesbian/feminist amateur choir based in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. The group was created by Kristina Boerger in 1990. The group consists of about sixty women who perform female-oriented, folkloric, and classical music.
The University of Louisville Cardinal Singers is a choir consisting of between 29 and 40 members, and is the most selective choral ensemble at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.
The Schulich School of Music is one of the constituent faculties of McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located at 555, Rue Sherbrooke Ouest. The faculty was named after the benefactor Seymour Schulich.
The Fairfield University Glee Club is a mixed chorus of about 60 undergraduate and graduate singers at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut. The Glee Club has performed in churches, schools and recital and concert halls throughout Europe, singing from Galway to Rome and Florence to London. The choir has performed at Carnegie Hall, the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., Westminster Cathedral in London, the Aula Paolo VI at the Vatican and the U.S. military academies at West Point and Annapolis.
Pacific Chorale, founded in 1968, is a professional chorus performing in Costa Mesa, California at the Renée and Henry Segerstom Concert Hall at Segerstrom Center for the Arts.
Donald Nally is an American conductor, chorus master, and professor of conducting, specializing in chamber choirs, opera, and new music. He is conductor of the professional new-music choir, The Crossing, based in Philadelphia. He teaches graduate students at Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music.
Dr. William John Dehning was an American conductor, teacher, and author who spent almost his entire career in the collegiate realm. He was known primarily for his work as conductor of the University of Southern California Thornton Chamber Choir and as author of the book, Chorus Confidential: Decoding the Secrets of the Choral Art, published in 2003. Under his leadership, the Thornton Chamber Choir won seven prizes in international European competitions, including Grand Prizes in Varna, Bulgaria and Tours, France. After winning the choral competition with the USC Chamber Choir in Bulgaria, Dehning was awarded the Judges' Conducting Prize by a panel of ten judges in 1999. During his tenure, the ensemble also appeared at American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) conventions six times, including nationals in 2001 and 2005. They also completed a tour of East Asia in 2006, performing at the National Concert Hall in Taipei. While at Northern Michigan University from 1970–1972, Dehning was the founder of the Marquette Choral Society, which is still active. Later, he was from 1985-1995 the founder/conductor of the California Choral Company, a semi-professional chamber chorus that attained a reputation in Europe as well as in the United States. As Chairman of the USC Department of Choral Music, Dehning was awarded the first annual Dean’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, and he was also the 2007 recipient of the Thornton School's Ramo Award. Dehning was one of four founding members of the National Collegiate Choral Organization (NCCO), which held its first national conference in San Antonio in 2006.
The Blair School of Music, located in Nashville, Tennessee, provides a conservatory-caliber undergraduate education in music performance, composition, or integrated music studies within the context of a major research university, Vanderbilt University. Blair also provides music lessons, classes and ensembles to over 800 precollege and adult students each semester. Blair is the youngest and smallest of Vanderbilt's ten constituent schools and colleges.
The choirs at Brigham Young University (BYU) consist of four auditioned groups: BYU Singers, BYU Concert Choir, BYU Men's Chorus, and BYU Women's Chorus. Each choir is highly accomplished and performs from an extensive repertoire. Together, the choirs have recorded and released over 30 albums. The choirs perform frequently throughout the academic year, both as individual ensembles as well as a combined group.
Oleh Mahlay is an American violinist, pianist, bandurist, choral conductor and lawyer of Ukrainian ethnicity. Mahlay has made a significant contribution to Ukrainian emigre music, primarily through his work with the Ukrainian bandura and the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus. Merited Figure of Arts of Ukraine.
Axel Theimer is a conductor, composer, singer, author and professor at the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John's University (CSB/SJU) in Minnesota. He conducts the professional a cappella choir Kantorei, the National Catholic Youth Choir and the Amadeus Chamber Symphony, and as of 2020 is in his 52nd year as a music faculty member at CSB/SJU, where he conducts CSB/SJU Chamber Choir and the SJU Men's Chorus. He is on the faculty and is executive director of the VoiceCare Network. He is an acknowledged expert on healthy vocal production for solo and choral singing, and the effect of conducting gesture on vocalists and instrumentalists. His choirs are known and praised for their particularly warm, natural, expressive and efficient sound.
Andrew Keith Wailes is an Australian conductor and music director. Winner of the Australasian International Choral Conducting Competition in Brisbane in 1999, he is the current artistic director and Chief Conductor of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra, Principal Conductor of the Melbourne University Choral Society, and music director and Conductor of the Box Hill Chorale. From 1999 to 2020 he served as artistic director of The Australian Children's Choir, and for a decade was Director of the Australian Catholic University Melbourne Campus Choir. He is a former president of the Australian Intervarsity Choral Societies Association, and is a former Artistic Administrator and artistic director of The Chamber Strings of Melbourne.
The Vancouver Cantata Singers (VCS) is an auditioned Canadian choir in Vancouver, British Columbia, founded in 1959 by organist and conductor Hugh McLean.
Washington, D.C., and its environs are home to an unusually large and vibrant choral music scene, including choirs and choruses of many sizes and types.
Harold Rosenbaum is an American conductor and musician. He is the artistic director and conductor of the New York Virtuoso Singers and the Canticum Novum Singers. The New York Virtuoso Singers appear on 48 albums on labels including Naxos Records and Sony Classical. He has collaborated extensively with many ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, Juilliard Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, Bang on a Can, Mark Morris Dance Group, Orchestra of Saint Luke's, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Riverside Symphony, and Brooklyn Philharmonic.
