What choir(s) can I join in the New York City area?
April 7, 2008 2:19 PM Subscribe
What choir(s) can I join in the New York City area?
I'd like to join a choir in the New York City area. I'm comfortable with auditioning if I must, but I'm not necessarily looking for something competitive or difficult to join. I'm open to all types of choral music, secular or religious, old or new. My only requirement is to find a choir with members in my general age range. I'm 24 years old.
I have studied classical music in high school and college- including voice lessons, music theory, piano lessons, musical theater and of course choir. While in school, I was always in a choir (or 2 or 3). I've been out of school for 2 years and am dying to get back into choral singing- as a serious hobby and as an opportunity to meet others with similar interests.
Hope you can help! Thanks!
posted by dm_nyc to media & arts (5 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
The general idea is that it's traditional Anglo-American Christian music, sung a capella in four parts from a book of 500-odd songs (so you'll sightsing often). The quirks are the timbre (rustic, projectable, not necessarily rounded), the shape notes (corresponding to an old-fashioned solfege system with only four notes), the aesthetic (polyphonic, with two harmony lines above the melody, and post-medieval in that parallel fifths are allowed but thirds are dissonances that must be resolved), and the dynamics (loud). But it's a lot of fun even if you are classically trained, and the sing I go to (in suburban Utah) is very sociable. I've heard it reported that both New York and Seattle have sings heavily populated by hornrim-clad hipsters, but I wear the only hornrims I've seen at mine.
posted by eritain at 5:10 PM on April 7, 2008