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.
CONCORA’s 2017 Summer Festival concert, “Exploring the Great Choral Masterworks,” took place on August 5, 2017, at Bethany Covenant Church in Berlin, CT. Read more about this wonderful week of music-making HERE. To receive earliest notice of registration for the 2018 Summer Festival (our twentieth!), 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 several high school choruses to prepare and present a full-length concert with CONCORA.
In 2017, CONCORA will be 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). The concert will be given on Saturday, November 18, at 7:30 in the extraordinary acoustic of St Thomas the Apostle Church in West Hartford. |
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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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