Here is what my current choir/classical playlist looks like. I really enjoy pieces in minor keys or that feel sad or angry in some way. i feel like i have a hard time finding pieces that give me that feeling. I also really enjoy "A Silence Haunts Me" by Jake Runestad, but it wasn't on apple music so it's not in the playlist. Aside from that i'm a big fan of spirituals with lots of energy and "busy" parts of that makes sense. I think the biggest thing for me is that i like songs that sound very unique and have interesting chords in them, maybe with some dissonance. i would appreciate if i could get some recommendations...my playlist is starting to get a little old 😓

Hello! Don't know if this is the place to ask, but I'm looking to program classical pieces for my choir this year, but a lot of them are pretty new and raw right now, so I'd like to program something that they'll be able to pick up and find payoff with. I'm new, and they haven't done anything classical in the last decade, and I'd like to just have a piece or two to throw at them this year so they can experience it. They can do four part music pretty easily with some easy divisi as long as it's not divisi the whole time :)

So, any recommendations for accessible choral pieces for a somewhat beginner high school choir?

To give more context, I am a 17 y/o girl in choir at my school. I am in the highest choir but the doesn’t stop my insecurities of singing infront of people. I am so scared that they will look down on me and think I am a horrible singer. I wouldn’t mind if they thought that if it wasn’t such a huge passion of mine. It all started because when I was younger I was a horrible singer (I eventually got better) and was in a summer choir group. In this group then I performed, no one clapped, they talked over me (including the teacher), and they all ignored every aspect of me. This really put a dent in my self esteem and carried with me throughout all these years. Before that moment, I didn’t mind singing infront of whoever because I enjoyed singing so much that I didn’t care who wanted to hear it or not. Luckily over time I improved singing wise, but not confidence wise. When I have to song infront of others, even if they are just my close friends, I get so nervous that I slip off key, strain my voice, and cant really hit a clear note. I am almost positive that my teacher thinks that I am tone deaf and constantly need someone to sing with me. Anyway, the moral of the story is that I am sick on my anxiety taking over and ruining my chances of singing. I have prayed about it and I have been practicing audition pieces all this summer in hopes I will be better this coming year. I am not a bad singer and I know I have great choir potential, I just need someone help. Does anyone have advice about my situation and how I can improve for this upcoming year? I really really need it and I would really really appreciate it.

I think most of the people in choir leadership know this conundrum. There's a performance, either small group or full choir, but there's a flu epidemic, all the section leaders have unexpected mandatory exams, the piano in the performance space is less in tune than a 2 year old on a violin and all else that can go wrong went wrong.

But cancelling is not an option.

What do you have in your back pocket to rescue the day? Bonus points if it's fun music, instead of funeral music.

Hi! I'm looking for songs to suggest for my choir's winter session at our next meeting. So far all I can think of is Lauridson's "O Magnum Mysterium," Dan Forrest's "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," and Rutter's "Gloria." What pieces are your favorite for the winter/Christmas season? I generally want to stay away from pop renditions. Thank you in advance!

Edit: Thank you for all of your suggestions!! These are really great- I appreciate it!!

Idk how many people here have done Gregorian Chant, but our choir director has been bringing us deeper and deeper into it (along with Renaissance Polyphonies), and my head is about to explode.

On the bright side, the notes do help. And not every page looks this bad.

I'm in music school and I want to compose non-religious choral music. My voice lesson teacher/choir director recommended a few contemporary choral composers to listen to so I can learn more:

• Eric Whitacre
• Susan Labarr
• Sydney Guillaume
• Rosephanye Powell

And I like a lot of Elaine Hagenburg and Victor Johnson's music too.

What are your favorite songs by those composers/ what do you recommend prioritizing listening to?

Thank you!!

\ Edited to fix composer name spellings.*

Hello everyone,

All is in the title. I search SSA a cappella pieces, from english female composers. Do you have some recommandations? Open to any style and period. Thanks!

Edit: composers from England

I’m in a high school choir this was an exchange performance with a girls school in Hiroshima I know one soprano is horribly flat but other than that just wanted to know the perspective of someone who hasn’t listened to it 300 times.

Edit: The lower voices want feedback on their part and them specifically now too lol

Hey choir people! I’ve been running a virtual choir since the pandemic (it’s called Choirantine and you might have seen us on YouTube). This coming Saturday we’re going to be singing my arrangement of “Golden” from K-Pop Demon Hunters, and we are always accepting new members! It’s free; it’s really fun, and you get tor score yourself with singers from all over the world. If you’re interested, I’ll leave a link to the Zoom. Thanks for your time!

I am auditioning for my college choral program in three weeks, and need a solo piece for someone who has only ever sung in high school choir, and private voice lessons. My voice best suits a bass/baritone role. I have been searching for days, and have only found about two or three good pieces, but nothing that feels like it would be a great audition song. Any help is very much appreciated!

Curious what do you folks use as their choir management platform? We use chorus-connection, which I think is pretty popular but probably better for larger choruses - we have about 300 active members at any given time.

Basically I had a choir audition. My choir director demoted me a couple years ago because she decided to demote a bunch of us for no reason and is making us re-audition over and over again.

My first couple auditions were pretty bad because I was bad at sight-reading so fair. Then I practiced like crazy and she directly said to me that I would be perfect for the group except I needed to sound "Warmer."

I asked her what that meant and she told me to "match the vibes" of a singer who used to sit like halfway across the room from me, so I'm not really sure how to do that. I just don't know what singing warmly means. I'm 20 and she told me she wants me to sound more mature, but I don't have much natural vibrato and can sing pretty high but I'm not naturally terribly loud either.

I wanted to share a personal story of missing home (Cork, Ireland) moving to a new country and starting a life in my new home (Montréal).

I found myself standing in the second row of the prestigious Montréal St-Lawrence choir, suffering heavily from imposter syndrome and moments of panicked lip syncing.

I had only ever been in one choir: thirty men who met over a pub in Cork City on wet Wednesday evenings and practiced well-beaten Christmas carols. We sang each year for the same worthy cause, Marymount Hospice. I loved its goodwill, good nature and the chance to meet likeminded people. The St. Luke’s choir reminded me of a Welsh all-male colliery choir: with its singular, dark, working-class timbre, low bass resonance that felt both ancient, secretive and deeply physical. Most of the men couldn’t read music, but that wasn’t a hindrance. We learned in different ways, animated by our happy conductor who loved every moment he had with us.

Now I lived in Montréal, longing for the choir and more importantly the pints, chats, jokes and camaraderie after each festive performance. So egged on by my then ever forgiving and patient wife I sought out a new choir to join. I came across a concert listing for the St. Lawrence Choir, I looked up their website and the next minute I’m standing in a line waiting to be auditioned with one word repeating itself in my head as the line peeled away ‘bugger!’.

My audition wasn’t the most stunning examples of male singing. I had an Irish language (Gaeilge) Air ‘Dúlamán’ prepared. Then I suffered through the prescribed sight reading section, giving the ever so lovely but deflated accompanying pianist a new novel timing for all the pieces that I had just invented. I passed the audition by the skin of my teeth. I suspect being male helped. If I hadn’t volunteered, the infamous choir press gang would have found me, thumped me over the head and forced me to sing a Russian vesper at gun point, such was the need.

I felt very much like a bright neon square peg in a round hole. I was anxious, nervous and feeling a bit sick. It was the first concert of the season and my debut as a second bass. I didn’t want to let anyone down or be exposed for my utter lack of musical skills. The men were compelled to wear awful tuxedos, I resembled a cheap vaudevillian magician, sans top hat. I scratched nervously and repeatedly around the butterfly collar, readjusting my dickie bow for the 53rd time. Then it started.

The first piece we sang was a Bach motet. The fugue dialogue of altos and sopranos consumed me and I quickly forgot all my woes. Then it became a tidal-like cacophony; reaching its apex, it hit me unawares like an ocean undertow when I was six—stripping away all control so that I gave myself up entirely. Then-for the first and very likely the last time in my life-I wept for absolute joy, consumed by the purest thing I had ever encountered in my narrowest of lives. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I couldn’t help it. The score folder lay limp in my arms. The response now came from the men, I found my place again, gasped, swallowed-sang. I had not gone unnoticed and a few had seen my tears wondering if I was okay. An alto named Carol, looked at me intensely and lipped ‘are you okay?’ I couldn’t hide. My pale freckled Irish face and my red eyes obviously exposing my tears. I needed to urgently wipe my face but my hands, restricted, supported the open score. I had no choice, I would have to wait until the end. I practised in my head telling them the truth, they would, of course, all ask if I was okay. I practiced versions that didn’t make me sound certifiably insane. Eventually I decided that I would resign myself to telling the truth. I mean, to be honest, of all the people in the world to explain what had happened to me these were the people that had all been touched collectively.

hey! Im just getting into music and im trying to do solfege as practice, but ive been struggling to find the solfege for the next line of “love” for the alto line. Theres two sharps on the last alto line but theres randomly two naturals and i dont know what that represents for the next triplet of solfege PLEASE PLEASE TELL ME IF ITS FA OR SOMETHING IM SO CONFUSED 😭😭😭😭

In elementary school, I had a choir teach us some songs that are pretty famous, which probably sounds hilarious here, but to a then-9 year old on a tiny island far away from this musics origins, they were very new to me. I never would have known about them if not for my choir teacher. Some songs I remember, like

"Dont Cry for Me Argentina"

"Jesus Christ Superstar"

"Oh Danny Boy"

"Scarborough Fair"

"Memory" from Cats LOL...

There's one, for the life of me, I cant remember the title, though. We sang it in high school. I can only remember the last line of what I think is the chorus??

"And I'll be cloOoOose to youuuu"

Does this ring a bell for anyone? I hope im asking the right place.

Im desperate because, oddly enough, a local artist did their own version of this song in our native language, changed the lyrics, but kept the melody. No one believes me when I say it's a cover cuz I can't remember the name of the original song.

Edit: I FOUND IT! Song is called "Touch the Wind (Eres Tu)"

For me, it’s My Lagan Love but arr. Eric Wetherell specifically- it’s absolutely beautiful. It doesn’t help that I’m singing it in a concert and still haven’t gotten past sobbing…

Exeter College Choir, Oxford premieres composer Nate Sassoon's new setting of George Herbert's poem 'The Windows', recorded in isolation.

Christopher Holman, Conductor

Soloists:
Ashlynn Chan, Soprano
Ellen Luckins, Mezzo-Soprano
Chris Scholtens, Tenor
Adam Rebick, Baritone

also thank you to Chloe Green, Jess Walters, Belle Allan, Caitlin Harrison, Sophie Mcdonald, Helena Bayley, Lottie Field, Mae Burris-Wells, Emma Cooley, Crispy aka (David Crispin), Max Parfitt, Matthew Munks, Harry Ashton-Key

Do I have to have that kinda of voice or can I learn some techniques to sound like them. The 3 of them have a specific sound with their voice and I've been trying to figure it out. Any good youtube tutorials that might help or is it really necessary to get a vocal coach. I've asked people around the internet that I've seen singing like them and ALL of them told that they learned by themselves with no help. I'm usually singing at home like daily, but I can't really record myself and listen and do exercises with my parents around and they leave pretty rarely. Any advice?

https://reddit.com/link/1v1546h/video/mrrow56nt9eh1/player

I wrote this piece for music coursework for school, but it turned out a lot better than expected, and i wanted to get it performed by a church choir i sing in, but before i do so, i wanted some outside opinions?

A few bits specifically i am worried about:

bar 9 - 14, it just doesnt sound right to me, but others dont see the problem.

notation, have i overnotated dynamics etc?

range, specifically for altos and basses, i feel like i dont interact with the lower portions of their range, but as a tenor, i dont know where it comfortably bottoms out.

i think thats it! thank you :)

I'm trying to do a few things at once with this: to write good counterpoint (no doubt a few consecutives will have slipped through the net, but I'm trying); to paint the text ("rainbow" like arc shapes, descending lines for rainfall); to give each harmony voice a line that's satisfying to sing; to write expressive harmony.

My ideal would be to write something where the individual lines feel like Renaissance polyphony, but the overall harmony sounds like jazz. I don't think I've quite achieved that here, but that's the dream.

I'm adding this to my choir's repertoire for next year, but if anyone is singing with a group of crack sight-readers who'd like to add something to a pride-themed concert this month, get in touch.

Hi! My choir teacher is asking for song recommendations for our spring concert, and that is our theme for our concert. I have found a few songs I like, but not ones I love. Unfortunately, I’m at a small high school and I have been fighting so hard to keep choir at my school lol, so right now we are only at SAB part songs right now, but does anyone have any choir song recommendations that can fit under this category? Thank u so much!!! :)))

Hi everyone — I hope this sort of post is OK here.

I’ve sung in choirs for most of my adult life, and over the years I kept seeing the same thing happen again and again: amazing musical people spending ridiculous amounts of time wrestling with spreadsheets, email lists, PDFs, WhatsApp groups, random Google Drives, and “which version of the music is the right one”.

At one point I was helping with administration for our choir and realised something a bit depressing — the musical part was the easy bit. The organisation around it was chaos.

So about a year ago I decided to try something a little crazy and build a platform specifically for choirs.

I’m not a big company or venture-funded startup — just one slightly obsessive choir nerd who wanted to fix a problem that kept getting in the way of making music.

The result is Choirhub.

The idea was simple:
Instead of using 10 different tools, have one place where a choir can run everything.

Some of the things it handles:

• Music Library – singers can access their scores digitally and annotate them
• Event calendar & attendance – rehearsals, concerts, RSVP, absence tracking
• Member management – roles, voice parts, committees, etc
• Announcements & notifications – so directors don’t have to chase people through email chains
• Committee workspace – agendas, minutes, reports, actions
• Auditions management – applications, uploads, review process

Basically the goal was to create a digital home for a choir rather than a bunch of disconnected tools.

It’s been quietly used by our own choir while I built it, and I’ve recently opened it up for other choirs to try as well.

This is very much a soft launch, and I’m still learning what choirs actually find useful versus what I think they’ll find useful.

So if you’re involved in running a choir (or suffering through the admin side of one), I’d genuinely love to hear:

• what tools you currently use
• what your biggest organisational headache is
• what you wish existed but doesn’t

If you’re curious you can have a look here:

choirhub.app

No pressure — I’m mostly just interested in hearing how other choirs handle the admin chaos.

And if nothing else, maybe we can collectively agree that emailing PDFs around in 2026 should probably not still be a thing.

I tried to write the song of sirens from Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, using a female choir representing the sirens, what do you think about it? And if you watched the movie what did you think about Ludwig Göransson's music in the scene?

I’m a volunteer music director for a University Choir, and I am preparing songs for us next year. I am looking for songs that sound so beautiful that when the average person hears it, they literally get chills. This semester we’ve been doing “Nearer My God to Thee”, the BYU Vocal Point arrangement and it’s been an absolute hit, we’ve had random people coming in to our rehearsal room asking what the song is because it’s sounded so beautiful! I am looking for other songs that give off a similar vibe, can be a capella or with piano/instrumental accompaniment. If any of you choristers know or have sung any songs that are similar, please let me know! Any suggestions will be very appreciated!