Choral Consortiums and the Local Advantage

Chorus America contacted representatives from about a dozen choral consortiums—umbrella groups that promote regional information sharing and collaboration among choruses. Those who manage these consortiums were eager to tell us about the advantages of collaboration, how they got started and why, and lessons they've learned along the way.

A chorus is perhaps our best illustration of the power of the collective. It's a thing of beauty when singers, conductors, administrative staff, and supporters all join together to create a musical program that moves, inspires, and delights.

As organizations, though, choruses usually operate as solo acts. They cultivate their own members, audiences, funders, venues, and reputation, often in isolation from, and sometimes in competition with, other choruses.

When we go to cities where we're having our Annual Conference," notes Ann Meier Baker, president and CEO of Chorus America, "we convene people for planning and frequently very few of them know each other. Often they don't have any idea what the other is doing."

This kind of isolation leads to obvious stumbles—two choirs performing the Mozart Requiem on the same weekend, for example—but more important, it's not productive for the choral music field as a whole. "If we really want to grow the choral pie bigger," Baker said, "we need to do that together."

Increasingly, choruses are seeing the wisdom and benefits of pulling together. Chorus America recently contacted representatives from about a dozen choral consortiums—umbrella groups that promote information sharing and collaboration among choruses in a defined city, region, or state.

We discovered that a number of factors have propelled choruses to join forces. For some, the motivation was simply better planning, in particular, avoiding those "two Mozart Requiems on the same weekend" scenarios. For others, the impetus was financial. With federal, state, and local funding for the arts increasingly on the chopping block, they wanted to have a broader nonprofit entity that could seek funding for and promote choral music in general.

A number of choral consortiums are taking advantage of economies of scale. All choruses deal with similar challenges—fundraising, marketing, and audience building, among them. Why not hold workshops on these topics that the board and administrators of all the choruses could attend? Many choruses have their own libraries of musical scores. Why not share that music with each other?

Beyond the practical reasons are artistic ones. A choral consortium can sponsor joint concerts or festivals in which a number of choruses participate, demonstrating to audiences both the variety and the vigor of choral music in a community.

Those who manage choral consortiums were eager to tell us how they got started and why, what the benefits are, and lessons they've learned along the way. Their hope is that other communities will see the advantages and jump in. Or as one choral conductor said: "Whatever inertia you may feel, get over it! There really are no downsides to coming together."

The Greater Boston Choral Consortium

www.bostonsings.org

The early 1980s was a boom time for Boston area arts organizations. Dollars flowed liberally from state and federal coffers and from many local banks and businesses, and there was a robust state arts council.

Then, almost overnight, funding dried up and the arts council nearly went under. Ann Marie Lindquist, at the time the executive director of Cantata Singers, convened a small group of choral administrators who together formed the Greater Boston Choral Consortium.

"We were panicking," Lindquist recalled, "so we said, okay, no one's helping us. We have to help ourselves. That was number one. We also realized we were all struggling for audiences. And who are our most logical audience members? Those who already attend choral concerts. That was the practical and secondary reason."

Beginning in 1989, choral administrators met monthly (except in the summer) to learn from each other about how best to meet their common challenges. Most meetings focused on a topic, be it audience development, fundraising, or subscription policies. The Consortium also invited outside speakers to share their knowledge on topics of interest to nonprofit managers, such as how to incorporate, how to draft bylaws, and how to recruit a volunteer board.

Meeting face to face helped the group cohere, Lindquist said, and they have tried to maintain a personal connection even as information sharing moved online. Member choruses pay a $50 annual fee and are expected to send a representative to at least five of the nine Consortium member meetings. The meetings are held at the end of the workday—4 to 5:30 p.m. to avoid conflicts with evening rehearsals and other chorus meetings—and locations are convenient to both parking and public transportation.

Today, the Consortium has 90 member choruses—"a narrow constituency of Boston choral groups," Lindquist said, "but I think there was value in the way we did it. You can join if you agree to show up. We are here to participate in collective programs."

Member choruses participate in a program that allows singers to buy tickets for the concerts of other member choruses at a discount. The Consortium also produces joint newspaper advertisements and program book inserts that list all the member choruses.

Among those collective programs are a number of strategies for promoting greater awareness of the many and varied choral groups in the greater Boston area. The Consortium maintains a website where choruses can post their concerts on a shared calendar. Member choruses participate in a program that allows singers to buy tickets for the concerts of other member choruses at a discount. The Consortium also produces joint newspaper advertisements and program book inserts that list all the member choruses.

The program inserts have been particularly popular, said Gina Poole, the current chair of the Consortium board. Member choruses can download from the Consortium website either a one-page version or a longer, four- to five-page version with fuller descriptions of the choruses. "Audience members complain when that list is not in the program," Poole said. "Choruses pay their own printing costs, so that's a consideration as to which version they choose."

The Consortium has continued to expand the range of topics presented at its monthly meetings. Recent meetings featured speakers on vocal health, the Alexander technique, and yoga for singers. From time to time, local composers have brought their music for singing and sampling by meeting attendees. An upcoming meeting with managers of area collegiate choruses will focus on ways to integrate students coming out of college into community choruses. The Consortium also maintains a Yahoo! group, where members can raise questions about issues of interest.

Moving forward, the Consortium board is looking at membership policies—particularly the attendance requirement, which some choruses are not adhering to. Poole agrees with Lindquist that meeting in person is important. "We are not just a place to market your concerts," Poole said. "We are a group of likeminded people who want to support the choral arts."

Regular, personal contact has made a difference in the Boston choral arts community, Poole believes. There is less competition and more of a spirit of "let's help everyone succeed." Poole recalls a recent Consortium meeting with a brand new member in attendance. "She was conducting a choral group that had been on the verge of demise," Poole said. "At the end of the meeting, she handed me the membership check. She was on fire, lifted up by what she heard. When someone takes your hand and helps you, you want to give back. When you walk into a room and there are all these people who share your passion, you're not isolated anymore. You get fed with good information and discover new ways to do things."

New York Choral Consortium

www.newyorkchoralconsortium.org

For many years, the music directors of the four large symphonic choruses in New York City—John Daly Goodwin, the late Johannes Somary, Kent Tritle, and the late Richard Westenburg—got together twice a year to do season program planning, as well as to discuss common concerns such as advertising, venues, and fundraising.

In 2005, the four initiated a schedule of quarterly meetings with representatives of a number of other New York City choruses to discuss how they might collaborate. By 2010, the New York Choral Consortium was newly incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and its member representatives were meeting every six weeks. And the Consortium was planning a major choral event—a Sing New York! festival to be held in the spring of 2011.

"I wish we had gotten formally organized much earlier," said Goodwin, music director of the New York Choral Society. "Hesitancy to share proprietary information—things like how many people are auditioning for the chorus, what is your annual budget, how are we doing on ticket sales?—might have gotten in the way."

Goodwin said there may also have been some fear that choruses would poach singers from each other. But in the end, the concerns were small compared to the benefits. "We realized that we are all really in the same position—we aren't really in competition with each other. There is so much more to be gained by pooling our meager resources in order to get more attention paid to the astonishing variety of choral music that takes place in New York City."

The Consortium currently has 30 member choruses, each paying an annual fee ranging from $50 to $150, based on the size of the group's annual budget. Members include independent professional choruses such as Musica Sacra, professional choruses based in churches such as Voices of Ascension, large volunteer choruses such as the New York Choral Society, and chamber choruses such as Cantori and New Amsterdam Singers. Today, the member choruses are represented not just by music directors, but by officers and administrators who meet regularly to discuss common issues related to marketing, programming, rehearsal logistics, and fundraising.

"We share information about all kinds of things," Goodwin said. "When we asked choruses what they were paying for their annual audit, we found out it was all over the map. If it's possible to save a few thousand dollars on accounting fees, why wouldn't you want to do it?"

Today, the member choruses are represented not just by music directors, but by officers and administrators who meet regularly to discuss common issues related to marketing, programming, rehearsal logistics, and fundraising.

The NYCC's stated mission is to "support, strengthen, and promote New York City-based choruses of all descriptions by fostering a spirit of collaboration and cooperation among its constituent ensembles." One tool for collaboration is the Manhattan Choral Calendar, available on the NYCC website and the website of WQXR, a classical radio station. The Consortium uses the calendar to raise awareness of choral performances, to facilitate greater variety in programming, and to avoid conflicting concert dates.

"We have an agreement that any choir that lays claim to a Verdi Requiem in a season, it is theirs," Goodwin said. "Someone else won't do it a month later. That has been very valuable."

Other benefits for Consortium member choruses are access to NYCC member choirs via email blasts, access to a shared press list, concert announcements in newsletters of NYCC choirs, program listings in other choirs' playbills, discount ticket offers to NYCC member concerts, and deep discounts on score rentals from choruses that maintain large score libraries.

Goodwin expects Consortium membership to grow rapidly, as they have identified at least 235 choruses in the New York metro area. An ongoing challenge has been finding a time when busy music directors and chorus administrators can meet. The Consortium has found that the 4 to 5:30 p.m. slot seems to work best for all and they rotate the day of the week to accommodate as many as possible.

In 2011, the Consortium's main order of business was preparing for the Sing! New York festival — "a big show celebrating the choral universe in New York City," Goodwin said. The festival, April 15 to June 15, 2011, featured and promoted under one marketing umbrella all of the spring concerts of member choruses and capped off with a massive "summer sing" June 15 at St. Paul the Apostle Church in New York City.

He says the festival helped galvanize the Consortium as an organization.

New Jersey Choral Consortium

www.njchoralconsortium.org

When a group of choral music aficionados got together in June of 2008, their agenda was to figure out how the choruses in northern New Jersey could better communicate and coordinate their performance schedules. But the group quickly decided that it made more sense to draw in choruses from across the state.

"We decided on a loose statewide structure with county chapters," Kathy Hannan, a choral singer who is treasurer of the New Jersey Choral Consortium, recalled. "We thought we would have the benefit of being able to do more collaborations—two choruses from different parts of the state perhaps performing the same work at each others venues, for example."

The statewide focus also meant more revenue from membership dues—choruses pay $50 and individual singers $25 annually—which would enable the Consortium to undertake more activities.

Hannan admits that the Consortium struggled a bit moving from the meeting and dreaming stage to the doing stage. "Some people who were enthusiastic in the beginning left," she said, "because there was no project going forward."

But doing the groundwork was important. By the time the Consortium had its official launch in March 2010, with chorus representatives from around the state in attendance, they had an executive board, a board of directors, bylaws, and a mission statement. And with the help of a pro bono lawyer, they had incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit so that they could apply for foundation and other funding.

"I think a lot of the individual choruses wanted to see that before they plunked their money down," Hannan said. As of March 2011, the Consortium had 31 member choruses from all parts of the state, including most of the "big ones that are well-recognized."

Some goals of the organization are to foster better communication between member choirs, help facilitate better partnerships, act as a resource for choral activities in the state, and actively promote the benefits of choral singing.

The only remaining barrier to taking action in all of these areas is people power, Hannan said. "Like with a lot of volunteer organizations, there are never enough people who volunteer to help," she said. "We're at a point now where we can see that this could really take off, if we had people to take on certain small jobs."

A number of experts from outside the Consortium have stepped in to offer their services, though, including a man with 25 years of marketing experience who agreed to give a free workshop. "He had culled a lot of examples from the choruses themselves, so it was very personalized to our situation and that made everybody feel great," Hannan said.

A vocal singing workshop and a sing-in, co-sponsored with the New Jersey chapter of the American Choral Directors Association, is on deck for the summer of 2011.

Greater Rochester Choral Consortium

www.choral-rochester.org

Rochester, New York, is not a large city but it is rich in choruses. In 1996, a half dozen music directors of community choruses began to get together informally to talk about scheduling, repertoire, and program plans. Within three years, the people administrating the choruses—whether they were volunteers, staff, or board members—were pushing to be included so that they could talk about other things, such as fundraising, audience building, and marketing.

From then on, both the conductor and the administrative representative of each chorus began attending meetings—held in September, January, and May (usually on a Saturday, 10 a.m. to noon). By 2011 there were 27 members (limited to community choruses), each paying annual dues of $25. The Consortium recently incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which will enable those who give gifts to claim tax benefits. A planning board meets a week before regularly scheduled meetings of the full membership to set the agenda.

The Consortium's primary activity is a biennial Prism concert in which area choral groups each perform five minutes of music back to back without interruption. The choirs are situated at various places in the 2,400-seat Kodak Hall at Eastman Theater so there's no filing on and off the stage. The audience fills in the seats not taken by the singers. Choruses pay $150 to participate, and the performance is free to the public.

While the Prism concerts have not significantly grown each chorus's audience, they have increased their awareness of each other and helped to spotlight the diverse choral riches in the area. The Prism concerts also inspired other collaborations. The director of one Rochester chorus regularly programs a "mini-Prism" concert, in which he invites several other groups in the city or in the outlying suburbs to perform. Those concerts have helped bridge what is a fairly significant divide between the choirs in the city and those in the suburbs, which have their separate followings.

The Consortium has been looking for ways to reach out to singers. One idea, tried twice, has had some success—inviting local and national soloists who perform regularly with the Rochester Symphony or other regional orchestras to conduct masterclasses. Singers apply for an opportunity to work with the master teacher on technique and performance before an audience.

Another workshop on the horizon is a solo audition day—where professional soloists come in to sing before music directors looking for vocal talent. The Consortium is also working on a joint ticketing plan—"a master season ticket that is like a choral pass for any performance of a Consortium chorus," said Dan McInerney, administrator of the small ensemble, Madrigalia, and treasurer of the Consortium.

Though they have occasionally invited guest speakers to address topics such as marketing and fundraising at their regularly scheduled member meetings, the Consortium hopes to do some more extended workshops on these and other common topics. For example, they brought Chorus America's acclaimed Chorus Management Institute (CMI) to Rochester, another way to give chorus leaders a good dose of management and governance expertise.

"Get everybody at the table. It will work. No matter how big or small the group, there is a lot to be learned from each other."

McInerney has these words to the wise for those forming a choral consortium: "Get everybody at the table. It will work. No matter how big or small the group, there is a lot to be learned from each other."

Twin Cities Choral Consortium

In the choral rich Twin Cities area of Minnesota, coordinating performance schedules was a key goal when forming the Twin Cities Choral Consortium in 2007. Interestingly, concert coordination hasn't happened yet, but other things have.

To assess interest in the idea of a consortium, Bob Peskin, executive director of the Minnesota Chorale, and Mary Ann Pulk, executive director of VocalEssence, emailed a list of community choruses and invited a representative to an initial meeting. Around 50 people turned out, representing some 40 choirs.

"Many folks knew each other," Peskin said, "but there were plenty who did not."

The newly formed group agreed to meet several times a year to focus on areas of mutual concern, such as fundraising, public relations, and marketing. So far they have had about 10 workshops, drawing from 25 to 50 people. In most cases, Consortium members or other local experts donate their time to lead the workshops.

The Consortium was also able to piggyback on another project already underway. Tom Hale, a local choral singer, composer, and conductor, had set up a website called Choral Express (www.choralexpress.com) that includes a calendar of choral concerts in the Twin Cities area. "That has become the Consortium's central listing of events online," Peskin said.

The calendar only promotes performances that have already been scheduled; it does not work as a planning calendar, so as to prevent performance date conflicts. But because choruses are getting together and communicating more regularly, "Everyone is much more aware of what the other is doing," Peskin said.

Another serendipitous event also helped propel the Consortium forward. As they were forming, Peter Myers, an independent filmmaker, approached Peskin about producing a documentary about the choral singing tradition in Minnesota. "We invited him to a meeting of the Consortium," Peskin said, "and then sent out an email to the whole Consortium list—about 70 choirs—and he ended up interviewing several of the chorus leaders. It enabled him to tell the story in a much more engaging way, rather than just focusing on the well-known groups."

Extra footage and interviews that did not end up in the hour-long film, Never Stop Singing—in essence, a rich archive of stories of choral singing in the area—can be viewed on the film's website (www.neverstopsinging.org). There have been talks about converting that website to the Consortium website—and perhaps incorporating the Choral Express choral calendar as well, but there are no firm proposals yet.

An impediment is time—and man- and woman-power to pursue promising projects. "We get so distracted because of our paying jobs," Peskin said. "And many choruses have no paid staff at all and are depending on volunteers who also have day jobs. We are all thinly funded choruses and we have to put our attention to our own organizations."

In the future, the Consortium may seek to incorporate as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, but there are concerns about the Consortium seeking funds from some of the same foundations that support individual choruses. "We would need to insure that funds for the Consortium would in no way diminish funds that the Consortium participants are already getting," Peskin said.

In general, though, competition is not a motivating factor among Twin Cities choral groups, Peskin believes. "This area is quite remarkable in the level of cooperation and collegiality," he said. "People respect one another's work. Part of that is that choirs have their particular niche. There may be some overlap among community choirs, but they are based in a specific community and not necessarily competing for audience."

On the Consortium's wish list is to hire someone to handle its day-to-day administrative tasks. "I think we would make a lot more progress if we had someone whose job is just the Consortium," Peskin said.

Greater Seattle Choral Consortium

www.seattlesings.org

A few years back, several directors of Seattle area choruses attended a meeting of the Greater Boston Choral Consortium and came back inspired to start something similar on the West Coast.

In 2010 they began brainstorming with other chorus directors and administrators and by the end of the year had enlisted into the Consortium some 55 member choruses, each paying dues of $50 a year. The Consortium accepts choruses from an area significantly larger than Greater Seattle—as far as Olympia to the south, the Cascades to the east, the Canadian border to the north, and the Pacific Coast to the west. Non-chorus organizations, as well as individuals, also can join the Consortium for a $30 annual membership fee.

At its first annual meeting at the end of 2010, the Consortium elected a working board of directors, adopted bylaws and a mission statement, and began assembling an advisory board. The board meets monthly and retired information technology professional and choral music lover Dwayne Eriksen chairs it.

One of the Consortium's first projects was to prepare a list of member chorus upcoming concerts that could be inserted in concert programs. Choirs enter their own information in Google Docs and the Consortium produces a PDF that choirs can download and print. "We try to keep it as concise as possible," Eriksen said, "so the choirs don't have to deal with a big, voluminous insert."

The Consortium also maintains a website where member choruses can enter descriptive information and links to their own websites. Choruses submit their concert dates in a consolidated Google calendar.

The main motivation for starting the Consortium was concern about the future of funding for the arts. "It looks like government organizations are going to have fewer and fewer dollars, from the NEA all the way down to our county," Eriksen said. "So we need to help each other out as much as we can."

The Consortium plans to serve its choruses in four areas: information sharing (the program insert with concert dates and lists of instrumentalists, soloists, and "ringers" on the website); artistic collaboration (joint concerts of two or more choruses); outreach to schools (inviting school groups to rehearsals); administrative collaboration (maintaining lists of experts in grant writing, development, marketing, etc.); and events (a choral festival that the Consortium hopes to put on in 2012).

Incorporation as a 501(c)(3) is an immediate goal, so that the Consortium can seek funding for the festival and other projects from foundations and other sources. The Consortium also hopes to have a meeting soon at which the entire membership, not just the board, can come and share information. Another project on the horizon is setting up a web-based music library that would enable members choruses to lend their musical scores.

"One of our choruses just did an inventory of their score library," Eriksen said. "It was valued at $75,000. So you can imagine with 50-some choirs how much music we are talking about. I'm excited about the possibility of sharing this resource. It would be highly beneficial to our members."

More on Consortiums

Beyond formally established consortiums, several choral clearinghouses function primarily as repositories of information about the choruses in their area. They hesitate to call themselves consortiums as the staff of choruses do not regularly meet or collaborate. Read more about these clearinghouses.


This article is adapted from The Voice, Summer 2011.