Northern California Children's Chorus

Reviewed by the Sacramento Region Community Foundation

$1,162 raised by 10 donors

14% complete

$8,500 Goal


The power of music, especially singing, can be monumental in a child’s life. Our singers responded to the question. “What is singing to you?”

Singing is . . . 

…for everyone . . . is my favorite because it makes me happy . . .is calming . . . is everlasting joy . . . for everyone . . .my passion . . . a story . . . is fun!! . . .  is connecting with others . . . the ability to express yourself . . .  brings me joy . . . awesome . . . Singing is self-empowerment.

We are in our 15th season! Our celebration of this milestone year started with holiday season, 2022. Our training levels performed at the Festival of Trees in Roseville and our touring groups with the Folsom Lake Symphony at the Harris Center. Our NCCC produced holiday concert included all four choirs, something we had not been able to do since 2019 due to the pandemic.

In February 2023, our high school women's group presents, "Women" a concert with pieces written by women, for women, or about women. This is coupled with an art show, Amazing and Inspiring Women, by local artist, Petra Hoette. Our spring concert, "Celebrate" is will double as our touring concert this year. We are taking singers to Salzburg, Vienna, and Prague to sing in some of the most inspirational cathedrals imaginable. It is an exciting and bust 15th season!


To have a better understanding of where we want to go, here is some history of where we have been the past 15 years.

The Northern California Children’s Chorus was founded in 2008 by Artistic Director, Judy Britts, to fill a void of children singing in a community choir in the Placer County area. The one choir grew to four levels: Training, Intermediate and Advanced children’s choir and an ensemble for high school women. We now draw students from Auburn to Elk Grove, Lincoln to El Dorado Hills, and all the cities in between. The singers are making life-long friends with those they would have never met had it not been for their love of singing.

Past projects/concerts include a collaboration with Dr. Beverly Wesner Hoehn, harp, and Anita Fetsch-Felix, violin, in a concert which included a piece for children’s choir, harp, and violin.  Other highlights include performing with the Pamela Hayes Classical Ballet and the Folsom Lake Symphony in "The Nutcracker", Ethan Bortnick at the Harris Center for the Arts, sharing the stage with David Benoit at Three Stages as the kid's choir for "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown," and a performance of John Rutter's "Mass of the Children", with Chanteuses, a local women's choir, and a chamber orchestra. The children's chorus released its first album, "Child of Tomorrow," a collection of lullabies. 

Creating life-long singers involves training the voice, understanding the music they sing, and giving them confidence to sing in multiple parts. Our different levels speak to a well-planned growth for each singer. 

TRAINING CHOIRS: The primary goal for our youngest NCCC singers is that they enjoy their experience of learning to sing. Through singing, activities, and games the children learn the basic skills of reading music, the vocal skills appropriate for their age, and the steps to becoming a confident performer. There are two choirs at this level. The desired outcome of all this training is for singers to progress to the next level. Due to Covid our youngest choir is suspended this year.

PERFORMING CHOIRS: Our performance groups are an advanced children's choir (Bel Canto) and a high school women's ensemble (Bella Voce). These singers meet for two hours per week to rehearse as well as participate in our music theory program. Skills are developed in vocal production, breath control, and in creating a pure head tone for bel canto singing. Music theory training includes sight reading skills, rhythm performance, and musical terminology. Both groups perform repertoire from a variety of styles and languages. The high school ensemble performed at Carnegie Hall, New York City in 2017 and 2019, and the advanced choir at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco The choirs have toured to Oregon, Los Angeles, performed at the Pacific International Children's Choral Festival and most recently toured to England and Wales singing at magnificent cathedrals like Gloucester Cathedral. 

MINI GLEE: Offered a couple of times a year, this class for five- to eight-year-olds is a six-week introduction to singing and music making. 

The Board of Directors, donors, and staff are passionate about continuing the excellence that our chorus provides children and youth in the greater Sacramento area. 

Giving Activity

Mission

The mission of Northern California Children's Chorus is to nurture the human spirit of all children through a choral music program that provides excellent training in vocal technique and musicianship skills, teaches repertoire from diverse cultural and historical periods, and provides a variety of performance opportunities in local, national, and international venues.

Needs

Marketing:

We need to hire an individual/agency who understands digital and print marketing, social media, and how to best recruit new singers.

We have an excellent program and we want to bring it to as many singers as possible. The big question: what is the best way for us to use marketing funds to find singers who want to sing? A marketing consultant and someone to create ads, blogs, flyers, would be the most beneficial use of funds for the Northern California Children's Chorus.

The funds gained through this campaign will be used to hire a part-time marketing consultant and fund the campaigns generated by the consultant.

Staffing:

We also need to hire a part-time administrative assistant. With the growth on our choir, the increased numbers exponentially increases the hours of phone calls, emails, communications, and tasks with our families. Our Executive Director is the only administrative staff at the this point - with four staff members being program staff.

Equity Statement

The art of teaching children to sing is a testimony to the definition of equity.

'Recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances.'

An audition is usually the first time we hear a child sing. From the moment they open their mouth and utter their first sound, the director is thinking, “how can I help this child to reach their full potential as a singer? Where will they have the best success and experience? What do they already know and what do they need to learn?"

Some singers have no singing experience, have never sung, have no music in the home or at school and others come from musical families with years of studying an instrument. Then you add in the age differences and learning styles and abilities.

Fortunately, our directors are professionals who are highly skilled at meeting individual needs (i.e.: slow readers in the training level means we read through the text together at a pace that all will be successful, then allow them to take music home so they can practice reading the words) Sometimes we have singers who are not strong at singing in parts, so we place them next to singers who are. The outcome is a group of children and youth who work together to learn together and to perform together. Through the process of learning as well as when the performance has concluded teaching children to sing is teaching them to adjust to one another, to learn from one another, to support one another, no matter their skill or ability, because they do it together.

Organization Data

Summary

Organization name

Northern California Children's Chorus

other names

NCCC

Year Established

2008

Tax id (EIN)

26-3143624

Mission Category

Arts, Culture & Humanities

Operating Budget

$100,001-$250,000

Organization Need

Funding: Other, Funding: Program

Demographics Served

Youth & Children, General population

Local Counties Served

Placer, Sacramento

Equity Statement

Equity Statement

Address

8757 Auburn Folsom Road #2428
Granite Bay, CA 95746

Service areas

Sacramento County, CA, US

Placer County, CA, US

El Dorado County, CA, US

Phone

9162200970

Social Media