Education & Outreach
CONCORA is invested in developing present and future musicians and audiences through its educational and participatory programming, which reaches people of all ages.
Summer Festival
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The Summer Festival offers adults and select high school and college singers from the community an opportunity to join with CONCORA in rehearsing and performing great choral works. Festival repertoire has included great choral masterworks such as choral arrangements by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker, the Requiems of Brahms, Fauré, and Duruflé; Part II of Handel’s Messiah, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in collaboration with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Orff’s Carmina Burana, selections from Bach’s cantatas, Schubert’s Mass in G, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and much more.
Read more about this wonderful week of music-making on our Summer Festival Page. To receive earliest notice of singer registration and concert tickets for the Summer Festival, please join our mailing list. |
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Extraordinary Concert
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CONCORA invites other choruses, especially children’s, high school, and college choruses, to rehearse and perform with CONCORA. The Extraordinary Concert brings together high school singers and choruses and to prepare and present a full-length concert with CONCORA.
In 2017, CONCORA was joined by several extraordinarily gifted Connecticut high school choirs to present a program of favorite movements from choral masterworks by Bach (Saint Matthew Passion), Mozart (Requiem), and Brahms (A German Requiem). In the 2018 and 2019 seasons, incredibly talented high school students from the Ensign Darling Vocal Fellowship at the Bushnell joined CONCORA singers for the annual Broadway concerts. |
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CONCORA-to-Go
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The CONCORA-to-Go vocal quartet presents an interactive, multicultural program, “Around the World in Music,” performed in area elementary schools and public libraries. CONCORA-to-Go is Connecticut’s only in-school cultural arts program that teaches children songs from all over the world. CONCORA-to-Go’s program of multi-cultural, a cappella singing takes students in grades K-6 on a musical journey across the globe. Through the use of visual aids and fast-paced question-and-answer periods, the singers interact with the kids, reinforcing educational concepts in music, geography, history, and math. The goal of the program is to allow children to open up to new cultures and to begin thinking about singing as something they can enjoy on many levels, today and for the rest of their lives.
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The musical journey “Around the World in Music” takes only 45 minutes. The quartet collaborates with teachers to tailor the program to each school’s curriculum, theme, or holiday. Studying Asia? Great! The program can focus on Asian music and how it differs from Western sounds to which the children are accustomed. Are your art classes studying Impressionism? The quartet can demonstrate in sound how the artistic movement influenced choral music, too. CONCORA-to-Go offers diverse seasonal programs, as well. For the month of December, we offer a Holiday Program, encompassing songs from many religious traditions. February brings Black History Month, when we are available to present music from Africa and the African-American experience.
For upper grades, CONCORA-to-Go presents a choral workshop for school choirs in grades 7-12, designed to improve a choir’s skills through listening and working with our professional singers and applying what they hear and learn to their own performances.
For more information about CONCORA-to-Go or to schedule a performance, contact CONCORA-to-Go Administrator Mark Child at 860-293-0567 or at mchild@concora.org.
For upper grades, CONCORA-to-Go presents a choral workshop for school choirs in grades 7-12, designed to improve a choir’s skills through listening and working with our professional singers and applying what they hear and learn to their own performances.
For more information about CONCORA-to-Go or to schedule a performance, contact CONCORA-to-Go Administrator Mark Child at 860-293-0567 or at mchild@concora.org.
Other Projects
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In 2016, CONCORA was invited to collaborate with student conductors from the graduate program in choral conducting at UConn/Storrs. The conductors led an ensemble of CONCORA singers and select vocalists from the UConn choral program in a program of a cappella choral works. CONCORA’s Artistic Director Chris Shepard mentored the graduate conductors before and after rehearsals to share insights on working with professional singers. The project culminated in a well-attended public concert in the beautiful Chapel at Trinity College, Hartford.
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Mozart's Tapestry
As part of our educational outreach, CONCORA recently joined forces with Music Worcester and the Masterwork Chorus of New Jersey (both conducted by our Chris Shepard) to produce a unique video entitled Mozart's Tapestry. Chris uses excerpts from our recent presentation of Mozart’s Requiem to explore the concept of texture in music. He illustrates how composers weave together different musical lines to create a cohesive fabric that is rich and varied, just as in a medieval tapestry. Appealing to music-lovers of all ages, this program will be circulated to high schools as well.
Mozart's Tapestry from Music Worcester, Inc. on Vimeo.
Follow along with the score
Click the button below to link to a downloadable PDF of the complete sheet music score for Mozart’s Requiem.