Where Are The World’s Best Choirs? Not In America

With an estimated 42.6 million people singing in American choirs today, there are bound to be a few voices raised in opposition to a new article in the magazine Gramophone that hits the U.S. newsstands this week.

Titled "The 20 Greatest Choirs," the article ranks the world's best ensembles, and finds America lacking. There isn't a single U.S. group on the list. Indeed, most of the choirs that made the rankings were British. Which led me to wonder: Are English choirs really that much better than those everywhere else? And why isn't there a single American chorus listed?

To find some answers, I sought out James Inverne, the editor of Gramophone, for this e-mail conversation about his choir rankings.

Click here to read the Gramophone article (scroll down past the opening essay). And please leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Tom Huizenga (NPR): What gave you the idea to rank the world’s choirs in the first place?

James Inverne (Gramophone): It seemed to me that there's a real excitement around choirs at the moment, as well as a great feeling of what you might call social relevance. Of course, I'd argue that all great music and art has relevance, but in the U.K. and elsewhere, choirs have been bringing together fractured and disadvantaged communities, acting in some measure as a unifying force in society. So, there have been various TV shows and the like that have arisen from this, and they in turn have increased that interest.