What happens when you take your concert to a museum, armory, warehouse, stone mill, or parking garage? Performing music in unusual venues can ignite a spark of creativity and community connection for choruses.

After more than a decade as chief executive of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Allison Vulgamore took a sabbatical to travel to a prison in Morocco for boys. She shares her transformative experience of preparing them to sing in a concert without the benefit of a shared language.

Choruses are pouring more resources and creativity into education outreach programs that have a far-reaching impact on students, teachers, schools, and communities—as well as on the choral artists who deliver them.

What allows one chorus to thrive for more than a century while another is forced to close down after just a few years? Leaders of some of the longest-running choral organizations credit a combination of factors for their longevity.

How Minnesota's VocalEssence and composer Eric Whitacre helped high school students, choral directors, and community members of all ages discover the power of contemporary choral music through a festival and community sing event.

Arts education is a civic investment with a tangible return. Dana Gioia emphasizes the need for arts education in all schools and for all children, and cautions against trading off the challenging pleasures of art for the easy comforts of entertainment.

Many types of organizations are tackling issues of diversity. Patricia Moore Harbour, who has facilitated a number of these discussions in a process that she describes as the Transformative Learning Experience, believes arts organizations, especially choruses, may start out ahead of the game.

Inner-city choruses are serving diverse populations in large urban areas where kids often do not have access or the means to participate in quality musicmaking. These "urban youth choruses" are uniting neighborhoods across differences of race, religion, ethnicity, and economic status to inspire and energize communities with messages of hope and healing.

Clearly the concept of subscribing is not dead, just look at the sports world! To make headway against the challenges to build a robust subscription base, we must work smart, be students of our surroundings, and ask fundamental questions. 

Thanks to a residency program, one composer spends time with three high school choirs, creating new music, new singers, and audiences for the future.