Borough of Manhattan Community Downtown Chorus (www.downtownchorus.org) is looking for many new voices to join a friendly — and varied — core group of singers. Singers of all experience levels and of all vocal ranges are welcome. The ability to read music is a plus but not a requirement as is prior chorale experience.
BMCC Downtown Chorus (www.downtownchorus.org) is a choral organization dedicated to fostering and sharing the art and joy of choral music and to enriching and educating our city’s downtown community through concert performances of music from diverse historical periods and cultures. Members include students, faculty, and staff from BMCC, as well as residents and professional of the downtown and neighboring communities.
The BMCC Choral Program of 100 members includes three separate choruses—College Chorus, Concert Choir and community based Downtown Chorus. BMCC choral groups perform at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center every spring with renowned music directors including Drs. Anton Armstrong, Richard Bjella, René Clausen, Tim Sharp, Randal Stroope, and André Thomas. These members experience, explore, learn, and perform elite choral repertoire such as Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Vespers, Faure’s Requiem, Vaughn Williams’ Five Mystical Songs, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and Forrest’s Jubilate Deo.
Chorus members were invited to perform with Gloria Estefan, a distinguished recording artist and seven-time Grammy Award winner at the 2010 US Open Tennis Championships in Arthur Ashe Stadium, New York. Invited by the former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office, BMCC chorus was featured as the sole college choir at the 9/11 Memorial for Recovery Workers in 2012. In December of 2018, as part of the BMCC Community Ambassador Program, the chorus performed as the sole holiday singers at the UNIQLO on Fifth Avenue. Spring 2024, eleven choral members of BMCC Chamber Singers showcased their talents before a live audience of millions when they performed as backup singers for the English singer-songwriting sensation Raye, during her musical guest appearance on the April 6 episode of Saturday Night Live (SNL) on NBC. These students sang backup as Raye performed her hit songs, Escapism and Worth It.
The BMCC Choral Program has been a sound musical home and a solid choral foundation for the college music majors, students, and community members. The chorus’s founder and artistic director is Dr. Eugenia Oi Yan Yau, chairperson of Music and Art Department at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC/CUNY). At BMCC she directs and oversees the choral program including the BMCC Concert Choir which she founded in 2005. Dr. Yau is one of eight leaders (amongst all 25 CUNY Colleges) for the 2019-2020 Diversifying CUNY Leadership: A CUNY-Harvard Consortium. This program, which aims to cultivate a diverse group of future leaders, supports, and celebrates CUNY’s commitment to a diverse community that is inclusive of all groups and individuals. As part of the program, Dr. Yau participated in a two-week-long program hosted by the Harvard Graduate School of Education and created a CUNY Virtual Choir Project featuring students, faculty, and staff from 11 campuses. In addition, Dr. Yau has served as the director of the Pace University Downtown Chorale and is currently the director of music for the children and youth at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City.
Downtown Chorus rehearses on Tuesday evenings, September through May, at the BMCC Fiterman Hall (245 Greenwich Street) campus, room F325, from 7:00-9:45 PM. First rehearsal for Fall 24 is Sept 3, Tuesday.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.