With a splendid performance at the Westtown Educators Conference, Singing City closed out their 59th season of making ‘Music that Matters’ in the Philadelphia area. This annual performance, more informal than most of Singing City events, touches on all three aspects of the Singing City mission - performance, community, and education - as the singers thrill, teach, and uplift the conference participants with their musical program.

The 59th season was full of such moments, beginning on November 11th, when the Fall Concert, Voice of the Muse, highlighted works by women composers. Philadelphia storyteller Charlotte Blake Alston (pictured, left) brought her enlivening touch to this program as Singing City sought to bring long-overdue recognition to female composers’ works from four different centuries.

For the first time, the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall was the setting for Singing City’s Sing-Along Messiah in December. Over 1200 audience members joined Singing City, four masterful soloists, and Michael Stairs on the new Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ in this delightful experience with Handel’s masterpiece. This event was so well received that the choir has been invited back for a return engagement in December 2007!

A less-expected Kimmel Center performance, this time in the Perelman Theater, took place this spring when Singing City was invited to perform with the world-renowned Kronos Quartet (pictured, right) in a performance of Terry Reich’s Sun Rings. A chamber choir from Singing City accompanied the Quartet in the two choral movements of this contemporary 10-movement work, which was commissioned by NASA and includes ground-breaking visual and recorded auditory elements.

Perhaps no other event so fully symbolizes Singing City’s commitment to its education and community mission as the Winter Concert, which this year brought together singers from Northeast High School Concert Choir, the Keystone State Boychoir, West Philadelphia Children’s Choir, and participants in the Singing City in the Schools program from E. M. Stanton Elementary School for individual group and joint performances. Singing City also premiered the winning compositions in the 2007 Singing City Prize for Young Composers. This was the first year in which First Prizes were awarded in both the High School as well as the College and University age group.

Throughout the year, Singing City continued its tradition of bringing choral music to Philadelphia through community concerts in various locations, including a ‘Sing-in, Sing-out’ at three locations simultaneously in January and a performance at the 75th anniversary program of Fellowship Farm. However, the capstone of a brilliant year was certainly the 59th Anniversary Concert with Dave Brubeck and the Dave Brubeck Quartet (pictured, left). In two amazing performances, the Choir, Quartet, soloists and guest musicians wowed the audience with Brubeck’s important 1969 choral composition The Gates of Justice as well as the Philadelphia premier of his recent work Commandments. Brubeck has been a long-time friend of Singing City, and his latest visit certainly builds even stronger this wonderfully exciting relationship.

As an outstanding 59th season comes to an end, Singing City now looks forward to furthering its mission of ‘music that matters’ into a landmark 60th year!