Chicago Children’s Choir (CCC), a nonprofit organization that empowers and unites youth from diverse backgrounds to become global leaders through music, is thrilled to announce the return of its beloved concert Songs of the Season, taking place on Saturday, December 18 from 5:30-7:00 p.m. at the iconic Epiphany Center for the Arts (201 S. Ashland Ave). This decades-old tradition will unite the entire CCC family in celebration of the Choir’s 65th anniversary season, bringing together singers from years past with today's youth to perform alongside CCC’s world-renowned Voice of Chicago ensemble and Hyde Park Neighborhood Choir. Tickets are $30 each and must be purchased in advance at ccchoir.org.
The one-of-a-kind program will be an uplifting celebration of the music of the season, featuring holiday favorites interspersed with highlights from CCC’s diverse repertoire, including the enchanting “Fauré’s Requiem,” “O Holy Night,” “Go Tell It On the Mountain,” “Winter Wonderland,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Shosholoza” (South Africa), “En Mi Viejo San Juan” (Puerto Rico), and more.
“We are excited and thrilled to bring back such a treasured CCC tradition while we commemorate 65 years of inspiring and changing the world through music,” said Josephine Lee, President of Chicago Children’s Choir. “Songs of the Season is already one of our most unique concerts and this year we are using the occasion to celebrate the Choir’s powerful legacy with a performance that fuses the voices of the past with the voices of our current singers. This revival will feel and sound like nothing we have ever done before.”
About Chicago Children’s Choir
Founded in Hyde Park in direct response to the Civil Rights Movement in 1956, Chicago Children’s Choir (CCC) has grown from one choir into a vast network of in-school, after-school, and online programs driven by one mission: to inspire and change lives through music. CCC has impacted the lives of more than 50,000 diverse youth throughout its 65-year history. Since its founding, CCC has focused on building programs that reflect the racial and economic diversity of Chicago. Eighty percent of youth served are from low-to-moderate income homes and participate completely free of charge. High school seniors enrolled in CCC have a 100 percent graduation rate, becoming global ambassadors who carry on CCC’s core values in a wide array of professional fields.
Under the leadership of President Josephine Lee, Chicago Children’s Choir has achieved new heights and revolutionized the youth choral arts through innovative creative partnerships and new artistic endeavors. The Choir recently collaborated with GRAMMY Award-winning music director and producer Peter CottonTale on his original song “Together” for Google’s 2020 Year in Search video, which went viral with more than 240 million views. Other recent projects include the 2020 PBS national broadcast of the new stage production of Leonard Bernstein’s MASS under the direction of Marin Alsop in July 2018 and 2019 with two frequent creative partners: the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Ravinia Festival; Lyric Opera’s production of Dead Man Walking and Tchaikovsky’s romantic thriller The Queen of Spades with select Chicago Children’s Choir singers cast as the children’s chorus; the world-premiere hip hop musical Long Way Home, written and directed by the renowned Q Brothers Collective, which played to five sold-out houses in 2018 and was subsequently released as a one-of-a-kind album in 2021; and collaboration on Chance the Rapper’s critically-acclaimed directorial debut, Magnificent Coloring World (2021), as well as on his debut studio album The Big Day (2019) and his GRAMMY Award-winning Coloring Book (2016) studio recording and tour performances. CCC has served as a model for youth choirs across the country including Boston Children’s Chorus, Denver Children’s Choir, and Indianapolis Children’s Choir.