Value Statement

Chorosynthesis values Collaboration, Innovation, Sustainability, and Excellence.

1. COLLABORATION

“Community-Minded”

1a. Connecting the Stakeholders

We value and honor every individual involved in the creation and production of our art and the meaningful connections among all the players and the balance of their roles, including performers, conductors, composers, board members, audiences, staff (volunteer and paid), community partners, and production teams. Toward this end, we seek to do the following:

• Diminish hierarchy and top-down approach within the ensemble, as the primary foundation of success.

• Involve composers as much as is feasible in our rehearsal and performance of their work.

• Break down walls among performers, funders, audience, and community.

• Serve to reach all people, regardless of age, gender, income, etc.

• Celebrate the whole more than a single part and the sacrifice of team members for the sake of the whole.

• Create spaces and times for food, drink, community, and conversations.

1b. Connecting to the Mission/Vision

All decisions and actions are driven by the mission and vision of the organization. As such, we strive for the following:

• Select singers for the Chorosynthesis Singers roster and then assign them to specific projects, based on need and fit.

• Partner with performers, board members, and funders who buy into the overall brand and ethos of Chorosynthesis.

• Seek avenues for maintaining the traditional choral audience and for expanding that audience through tastefully and boldly approaching social consciousness in all programming activities.

• Use language in both private and public settings that reflects our values and mission/vision in our conversations and in our art.

• Educate artists and audiences as holistically as possible in and through community engagement and performance projects, particularly since we engage in socially conscious material, the nuances and particular perspectives of which may be unfamiliar or largely unknown.

2. INNOVATION

“Socially Conscious”

“New Music”

“Concert ‘Experience’”

We value moving both the choral art and the human condition forward in ways that may stretch and expand our concept of superb choral composition and performance and of human empathy and social justice. To that end, we challenge ourselves and our audience by doing the following:

• Create project experiences that expand audiences to be more inclusive.

• Develop a new audience for choral music by creating trust with performers, audiences, community partners, and funders that every project will engage in meaningful socially conscious topics and stories, such as, but not limited to, the following:

  • Environment

  • Human Rights

  • War/Terrorism

  • Equality

  • Marginalized Communities, such as LGBTQ, etc.

  • Child Advocacy

  • Women’s Rights

  • Socio-Economic Inequality, Income Inequality, Poverty

  • Discrimination

  • Immigration, Displacement, Deportation, Colonialism

  • Disabilities

  • Health - Lack of Access, Cancer, Depression, HIV/AIDS

  • Animal Rights

  • Technology

  • Domestic Violence, Abuse

  • Education

  • Empathy, Human Connection

  • Homelessness

  • Human Trafficking

  • Sexual Harassment, Abuse

  • Suicide

• Contribute a large body of new high-quality, socially conscious works that transforms choral composition, expands the demands of vocal performance, and empowers the audience to reflect and/or act.

• Embrace calculated risk and the possibility of failure when it comes to adventurous programming.

• Commit to experimenting with non-singing production elements in the creation of multi-sensory experiences for our audiences (choreography, staging, lighting, costumes, projections/videos, sets, subtitles, venues, etc.).

3. SUSTAINABILITY

“Business-Minded”

We recognize that for our mission and vision to have a lasting impact, we must prioritize sustainability in our organization by respecting performers’ livelihood, making the choral art immediately and universally relevant, developing long-term relationships with audiences, and impacting social change, while also being fiscally sound and responsible. Toward this end, we uphold the following:

• Prioritize the sustainability of the singer livelihood over all other elements when funding.

• We pay singers a fair market wage by the project and ask them to be fully committed to the project, whether a performance and/or recording.

• Foster subsequent performance of new works by creating recordings (archival or commercial) as an investment in the composer and their ongoing work.

• Seek funding partners who see their investment in the creation of these new works as a gift to the world, not a “loss.”

• Contemplate with the artistic team of each project how to create the most performer and audience impact through relevance and/or meaningfulness.

• Engage in projects based on necessity, importance, and organizational ethos over financial gain.

• Donation of time and work by Co-Artistic Directors, Board Members, and other volunteers in the organization.

4. EXCELLENCE

“Artistry-Minded”

“Commitment to Brand”

We contend that the best vehicle for social consciousness and exquisite compositional craft is excellence in the performance of that music. Excellence, then, is situated contextually among our other values; seeking musical perfection is never to the exclusion of the people or mission. With these guiding values, we reach for the following:

• Schedule the rehearsal time required to meet the highest artistic outcome of the project; budget must meet the demands in order for the project to proceed.

• Create the best possible roster for each project, which may involve bringing some singers from outside the geographical area, in the interest of maintaining the highest level of combination of performance and organizational ethos.

• Establish a quality of media output (graphics, video, text, and music) and performance production (non-musical elements) equal to that of performance and community engagement.

• Continue to develop our brand: “A symphony of voices embedded with social consciousness”

  • Display high-quality choral composition.

  • Select texts that honor vision/mission and connect to artists and audience.

  • Authentic performance experiences that embody our ethos, inspire our audience, and transport us to the scene.