To mark the 10th Anniversary of the Choral Chameleon Summer Institute for composers and conductors, which had to be postponed due to Covid-19, we released 3 hour+ long roundtable interviews about the Institute experience, hosted by Artistic Director Vince Peterson.

This series offers unprecedented access to the life of the Institute, from the point of view of each of its key participants: students, singers and faculty, incorporating a selection of composers' draft scores and music clips.

With 3+ hours of viewing on offer, its officially a binge-watch moment!

Building from this Winter's feature story in Chorus America's magazine 'The Voice' on Composer-in-Residence programs (you can find it on our Press page), which featured an extensive interview with Artistic Director Vince Peterson, the conversation continued this month with an invitation to host a panel at this month's Chorus America virtual conference on 'Building Composer Partnerships'.

Vince was joined by composer Angélica Negrón, for whom we worked as a guest artist this season during her residency at New York Botanical Garden, and have commissioned, alongside three of our Composers-in-Residence: Rex Isenberg, Jeffrey Parola and Dale Trumbore.

The discussion centered around the benefits of being able to work with a choir over an extended period and, in this time of uncertainty, for the opportunity to work with living composers whose work can help a choir and its audience to maintain a dialogue with the present, through thoughtful use of texts.

The panel can be watched by all conference attendees until June 30th.  

Picture Credit: LA Johnson/NPR

We wholeheartedly condemn the murderers and systemic racism that led to deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and of so many other black people in recent years and beyond.

We also acknowledge the role of institutions play in continuing to feed inequality and bias - it has led us to examine our own responsibility to uproot and eliminate systemic inequities and biases within our community.

We have carefully considered each of the following resolutions, which we are announcing today. 

Moving forward, Choral Chameleon is committed, thus far, to the following actions:

• Establishing a scholarship fund reserved exclusively for BIPOC and women, which may be used toward tuition for our education programs.
• Revising our audition and institute application process to a "blind" process in which adjudicators are not shown any racial, gender, or schooling information while considering and rating submissions. 
• Publishing our entire repertoire history on our website. It will be searchable by multiple parameters to continuously expose and account for the mindfulness and integrity of our programming practices.
• Donating a portion of the proceeds from this year's Virtual Institute to The Institute for Composer Diversity at SUNY Fredonia, a center dedicated to the celebration, education, and advocacy of music created by composers from historically underrepresented groups.

If you would like to support our efforts by donating to our scholarship fund or matching our gift to ICD, please contact us at info@choralchameleon.com.

We're grateful that we can make the space to meaningfully address this important matter as a whole organization with your support as our extended family.

Sincerely,
Vince Peterson, Founding Artistic Director
Nicole Belmont, Executive Director
and
The Board of Choral Chameleon

The Choral Chameleon Summer Institute for composers and conductors has been enabling musicians of many career stages to work on becoming their best musical selves within a challenging and supportive environment since 2011.  It is normally held in Brooklyn at the end of June and culminates with a fabulous concert packed with premieres of all of the pieces that have been composed during the week.
 
While we have provisionally postponed our in-person Institute to January 2021 (and remain open for applications), this June we are thrilled to be hosting a week-long virtual gathering for musicians and anyone interested in the development of new music.  

The program offers both free public content and tuition-based programs for musicians at all levels of ability. 
 
PROGRAM
 
10th Anniversary Retrospective Roundtables – Free to the public
45-50 minute discussions hosted by Choral Chameleon Founding Artistic Director Vince Peterson, featuring recordings from the Summer Institute concerts which will be premiered on Facebook and YouTube at the following times:

• Faculty / Monday 22nd June at 6pm Eastern - LINK 
• Singers / Wednesday 24th June at 6pm Eastern - LINK
• Alumni / Friday 26th June at 6pm Eastern - LINK

Study Tracks - Subject to Tuition Fees

• 7-Day Ear Training Bootcamps at Beginner, Intermediate & Advanced Levels (Monday-Sunday)
• 7-Day Score Reading Workshop with Vince Peterson (Monday-Sunday)
• 5-Day Choral Arranging Workshop with Vince Peterson (Monday-Friday)

​
To learn more about these workshops, click here

​Learn more about what Choral Chameleon's Chorus was working on when we had to suspend rehearsals in March 2019. Our 'Bigger Than My Song' project, due for performance in May, involved 11 new arrangements of pop songs which were going to be sung then recorded and remixed by a DJ. A complex exercise in multiple stages.

Artistic Director Vince Peterson got together with 5 of the commissioned composers for a chat about the project. All but one of them are also alumni of the Choral Chameleon Summer Institute for Composers and Conductors.

Composers interviewed are: Lauren Bydalek, Jared Graveley, Lydia Jane Pugh, Zachary James Ritter and Derek J. Weagle