Coro Allegro: Building Bridges between Communities through Extraordinary Music!
With the New Year, it's time to rededicate ourselves
to building bridges through extraordinary music!
WATCH: Coro Allegro, David Hodgkins, Artistic Director, and The Heritage Chorale of New Haven, Jonathan Q. Berryman, Director, collaborate in a virtual choir of "Lord, Make Me an Instrument," by M. Roger Holland II, from "A Conversation Still Needed: William Grant Still and Black Lives" part of Coro's Amplifying Black Voices series.
THANK YOU to all from the Coro Family who supported Boston's LGBTQ+ and allied classical chorus in the Season of Giving! We could not have survived the challenges of this time without people like you who understand the power of music — to express emotions, to heal, to strengthen the ties between us, and affirm our shared humanity. If you haven't had a chance yet, please consider a gift to help sustain Coro Allegro's award-winning programming and mission of building bridges between disparate communities through extraordinary music.
Coro Allegro: FAURÉ REQUIEM
and diverse works of consolation, hope, and gratitude
Live at the Church of the Covenant
Sunday, November 14, 2021
Join us for music of consolation, healing, hope, and gratitude in the beautiful sanctuary of the Church of the Covenant.
In memory of those lost to the pandemic.
In gratitude to the front-line workers who carry us through.
Due to generous donors, Coro Allegro is pleased to offer complementary tickets to front-line workers.
RSVP here by Friday, November 12.
Program:
CRAIG CARNAHAN, Armistice 1918: Everyone Sang
SIVAN ELDAR, The Song About the Child
on a poem by Arab Israeli poet Salman Masalha
VIKTOR ULLMAN, "Eliahu Hanevi" and "Anu olim"
R. NATHANIEL DETT, The Chariot Jubilee
Davron Monroe, Tenor
GABRIEL FAURÉ, Requiem in D minor, Op. 48
Adriana Ruiz, soprano
Aaron Engebreth, baritone
Heinrich Christensen, organ
RANDALL THOMPSON, Alleluia
We thank our community to for their commitment to making our return to live music safe. Proof of vaccination or negative test results and masks will be required. for all. Please review Coro Allegro's full Safety Protocols.
Coro Allegro was proud to perform at
Terezín Music Foundation Live & Virtual GALA
MUSIC & DRAMA FROM TEREZÍN October 25, 2021
Missed Us Live at Symphony Hall?
In the spirit of the Terezín cultural community, we gathered to share the life-affirming force of music.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Special video performance by Yo-Yo Ma
Music by outstanding artists lost in the Holocaust
A dramatic performance of the stellar Brundibár Suite
Virtuoso Nathan Meltzer performing on the Totenberg-Ames Stradivarius
Members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra,
Boston's acclaimed Coro Allegro
HONORING
ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC Director
SIMON GRONOWSKI, survivor and musician
Executive Director Yoshi Campbell and Artistic Director David Hodgkins celebrate outside Symphony Hall with the newly released book, Our Will to Live: The Terezín Music Critiques of Viktor Ullmann, Illustrations by Terezín Artists, by Mark Ludwig, Executive Director of the Terezín Music Foundation.
Help us bring live music back!
In response to challenging times, Coro Allegro has transformed itself, finding innovative ways to fulfil our mission of building bridges through artistic excellence. We have performed in the Terezin Music Foundation's Concert Film in collaboration with diverse, distinguished artists from Boston and around the world. We have premiered an award-winning Amplifying Black Voices series, featuring Black artists with whom we have a proud history of collaboration. We have launched a Coro Academy and honored the LGBTQ+ choral movement with Devotion: A Celebration of GALA Choruses. To sustain this work, we have won grants, hosted events, and been uplifted by an outpouring of support from our loyal community of performing arts lovers like you.
Now we need your help to return to the groundbreaking, moving performances that you have learned to count on from Coro Allegro. We can't wait to sing for you again. Can we count on your support to get us there?
Letters to Our Children:
Voices across Generations for LGBTQ+ Youth
RESCHEDULED: Sunday, May 22, 2022 at 3pm
Old South Church, 645 Bolyston St, Boston
Save the Date! Tickets on sale soon.
ANDREA CLEARFIELD, Here I Am: I Am Here [World Premiere]
based on open letters by LGBTQ+ youth advocates Mimi Lemay and Sam Brinton
RONALD PERERA, When Music Sounds
OLA GJEILO, Dark Night of the Soul,
GJEILO, Luminous Night of the Soul
The 14th Annual Daniel Pinkham Award will be presented to Sam Brinton for their work to end the dangerous and discredited practice of conversion therapy.
Voices reach out across generations in a newly commissioned work by an award winning composer. A mother writes to her transgender son on his 5th birthday to affirm who he always was. A survivor of conversion therapy writes to the memory of their own younger self, fighting to survive their mother’s desperate attempt to save them from who they are. We further explore the power of the human voice and spirit through poems on music by Walter de la Mare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Emily Dickinson, and a contemporary Norwegian composer’s settings of a 16th century Spanish mystic.
Supported in part by grants from Choral Arts New England, the Boston Foundation, the Boston Cultural Councill, administered by the Mayor's Office for the Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Watch Coro's Award-winning
Amplifying Black Voices series
Premiere: America, We Need to Talk
featuring Composer Fred Onovwerosuoke
Join us for conversation, music, and poetry as we shine light on classcal music, race relations in America, and the movement for Black Lives through the prism of Onovwerosuoke's kaleidoscopic work A Triptych of American Voices: A Cantata of the People, commissioned for Coro Allegro in 2019. With guests: Adelia Parker-Castro, artist, Tai Oney, countertenor, Jonas Budris, tenor, Christopher Wilkins, Music Director of the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, and Willis Emmons and Zach Durant-Emmons, commissioners. Learn more.
A Conversation Still Needed:
William Grant Still and Black Lives
Jonathan Q. Berryman
the Heritage Chorale of New Haven
Join Jonathan Q. Berryman, Director of the Heritage Chorale of New Haven, Coro Allegro, and guests for powerful conversation and moving music, as we look at William Grant Still's courageous 1940 work, And They Lynched Him on a Tree , Black lives, and the continued need for equal justice. With guests: Judith Anne Still, archivists and advocate for her father's work, and Marietta Simpson, mezzo-soprano. Learn more.
WATCH "A CONVERSATION STILL NEEDED"
The Amplifying Black Voices series is supported in part by grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Boston Cultural Council - administered by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, the Boston Mayor's Office for Arts and Culture, and an Alfred Nash Patterson Grant from Choral Arts New England and has been awarded the 2021 Choral Arts New England Board grant, "exemplifying advancement of the Board's priorities in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion."
Look for Coro's upcoming album
In the spring of 2018, Coro Allegro and Artistic Director David Hodgkins were proud to record We Are Here at Futura Productions. The album features Kareem Roustom's Rage Against the tyrant(s) and Eric Banks' Aluta continua: The passion of David Kato Kisule, two works by American composers bearing witness to international human rights. Keep an eye out for the full album in 2021!
Dear Friends,
in March 2019, long before the pandemic silenced our concert halls and our communities poured into the streets to cry out for justice following the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, Coro Allegro and the Heritage Chorale of New Haven joined forces for a concert called America/We Need to Talk . . .
. . . Coro Allegro stands with the Black community in turn. To our Black singers and audience members, and all the Black artists with whom we have the honor to make music, please know that we support you. Even if we can't sing together right now, we will still raise our voices with you to call for justice, to hold you safe, and to affirm that Black lives matter.
Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson lays out with clarity why America needs to talk about race and its role in our history:
"We have been practicing silence about our history for a very long time. In this country, we don’t talk about slavery, we don’t talk about lynching, we don’t talk about segregation, we have a hard time talking about race . . .We react to the effort of trying to talk about it as if that’s the threat. Not our continued silence."
Fred Onovwerosuoke closed his Cantata of the People with these words by his friend, the late Poet Laureate of St. Louis, Michael Castro: "We breathe the same air, [we] want the same things, we need to talk."
For the full statement, links to support our partners, and an extraordinary video by the Intercultural Music Initiative, visit the Coro Allegro blog.
Join us!
Coro Allegro is Boston's LGBTQ+ and allied classical chorus. Under the baton of Artistic Director David Hodgkins, Coro Allegro is known for award-winning programming, powerful commissions, and critically acclaimed performances and recordings of works by diverse classical and contemporary composers. We are proud to offer a welcoming, affirming and supportive environment for performers and audiences alike.
Experience that pride and community for yourself. Join the Coro Family of friends, allies, and members of the LGBTQ+ community as a singer, supporter, or volunteer.
Auditions
Coro Allegro is seeking new singers for its 2021-2022 season. Auditions will be held by appointment for all voice parts! Learn more about the process and schedule an audition today!
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