Audience members participate in the Chanticleer National Youth Choral Festival's "twitterpause."

High Notes: April 2010

Every month, we round up interesting tidbits on current events in the choral and classical music worlds. Here's what's going on this month:

Chanticleer Youth Festival’s mid-concert “twitterpause”

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. That was the impetus for a highly unusual “twitterpause” at a concert at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. Some 450 students from 12 top high school choirs around the country and the 12 members of Chanticleer were midway through the culminating event of the Chanticleer National Youth Festival when education director Ben Johns issued a startling invitation:

“Everybody take out your cell phones and take a picture. Then send it to Twitter and to your Facebook page.”

“Most of the kids, when they get completely burned out with rehearsal, they take out their cell phone and text somebody something,” Johns said. “So we thought, why try to stifle that natural response to what’s going on?”

Rusty Rueff, the guy who gave Chanticleer the idea for the “twitterpause,” estimated that some 500,000 people could potentially get the picture (multiplying numbers of people with Facebook accounts by average number of friends). That’s a potent marketing strategy in choral land.

It worked! Whitacre’s virtual choir debuts

In the November 2009 High Notes, we told you about Eric Whitacre’s virtual choir project, where singers use their computer webcams to record themselves singing Whitacre's "Lux Aurumque."

Well, it all came together—and quite beautifully. Whitacre and his team chose 250 singer submission from around the world to make this video:

“I’m hoping that this is just the beginning,” Whitacre writes on his blog, Soaring Leap.

“My ultimate goal is to write an original piece for the Virtual Choir and have it receive its world premiere in cyber-space, hundreds (maybe thousands) of people singing alone, together.”

Atlanta Gay Men’s Chorus honors courageous teen

Perhaps you saw the story on the news: a young man named Derrick Martin from Cochran, Georgia, wanted to go to his high school prom—with his boyfriend. After a heap of controversy, Bleckley County High School said, “Okay.”

Members of the Atlanta Gay Men’s Chorus, impressed with Martin’s courage, recognized him at their spring concert on Friday, March 26 and made him an honorary member of the Chorus. The second half of the program, “Shaken, Not Heard, Stories of Gay Men, Faith and Reconciliation” was dedicated to Martin.

Jobless choir gives community to those without workplaces

The current economic crisis, felt worldwide, has left many people unemployed, including Sarie Teichfischer of Leipzig, Germany. Wanting to bring others together who were also facing unemployment, she co-founded and now manages the Bohemian Choir—a chorus for people who are jobless.

The chorus not only provides an outlet for musicmaking, but also gives a sense of community to those who are without workplaces. Listen to the recent NPR story about the Bohemian Choir.