Los Angeles Children's Chorus

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The Los Angeles Children's Chorus (LACC) is a community children's choir for girls and boys with unchanged voices from the Los Angeles area ranging from ages 8 to 18. Founded in 1986 by Rebecca Thompson, the 5 levels of choirs have given more than 300 performances, including concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Los Angeles Master Chorale, and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

1 History
2 Schedule and procedures
3 Notable performances
4 References
- 4.1 External links

[edit] History

In 1986, teacher Rebbecca Thompson at Polytechnic School in Pasadena was asked to find children to sing in a performance of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. She rounded up a couple dozen girls and boys from the school whom she thought sang well enough, and after a few days of rehearsal, the children sang in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, to great success. Thompson decided to start a small choir in her husband's church, the Pasadena Presbyterian Church. Year after year, word spread about the new Los Angeles Children's Chorus and more and more children decided to audition and join. In 1996, Anne Tomlinson became the artistic director for LACC. The choir has been continuously growing; by 2006, LACC had five different levels of choir and about 250 members. Since 1986, the chorus has trained over 800 choristers, some of whom have continued to pursue professional singing careers, as well as many others who have remained active and passionate in the musical world today.

[edit] Schedule and procedures

A third of the chorus are boys, who generally leave at age fourteen or fifteen when their voices change. The chorus are divided into five choirs: Preparatory, Intermediate, Apprentice, Concert, and Chamber. The touring Concert Choir is comprised of approximately sixty to eighty singers.

Rehearsals are once or twice a week, depending on the level of choir. Solfege and sight-singing are used to learn new pieces. Each of the choristers receives music theory lessons, private vocal coaching sessions, and voice evaluations twice a year. Tours are taken each year in the summer, and the Concert choir tours internationally every other year. The choir has been to Great Britain, Eastern Europe, Australia, Brazil, Italy, and a number of cities in the United States and Canada. The chorus, which Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen has called "the best children's chorus I have ever heard" (Looseleaf 44), has recently performed in the Sounds About Town series in Disney Hall, and sang Carmina Burana in the Hollywood Bowl in mid-September, 2006. The artistic director and conductor of the Concert Choir level is currently Anne Tomlinson.