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We believe in the power of singing. The way in which a love for singing can instill confidence and give young people a platform. Our approach is versatile and flexible, with a foundation in healthy singing and authentic performances.
Brooklyn Youth Chorus students are trained using the Cross-Choral Training® method, a proven holistic and experiential approach to teaching voice and musicianship in a group setting, designed by Founder & Artistic Director Dianne Berkun Menaker. It is a functional voice training based on voice science and health and a comprehensive approach to building sight-reading and music literacy skills that builds a foundation for healthy singing across a wide variety of genres and styles.
Our goal is to give students a stage and a platform, that when supported by a world-class music education, allows their unique, independent voices to combine into one ambitious, extraordinary sound.
Preparatory Division, Spring Sings, 2019
Areas of Focus
With a scope and pace appropriate for the ages and abilities of our singers, all students receive instruction in three key areas:
Voice training (vocal development and applied technique)
Musicianship and music literacy (sight-singing, ear training, theory and harmony)
Performance (for a variety of styles, genres, and periods)
We also focus on developing attention span, concentration and the art of collaborating as a group, skills vital to performing well in rehearsals, on professional concert stages, and in life.
Voice
Based on traditional classical vocal pedagogy, vocal health and function, our voice training is also age appropriate. With a strong grounding in voice science, we safely expand the technical skill and capacity of singers by developing a range of vocal qualities including those appropriate for classical, contemporary, folk, musical theater, gospel, pop and jazz styles.
Musicianship
Experiential and sequential, our musical training at each level expands and deepens the knowledge and skills learned earlier. Our youngest singers begin with a strong grounding in tonal music, basic rhythms and meters, practiced in the context of the performance repertoire.
As the singers advance, studies expand to encompass a variety of relative and fixed pitch sight-singing systems like tonic solfege, scale degrees, letter names and interval relationships. More complex tone sets, modes, meters and harmonic analysis are introduced later. The result: our singers gain the knowledge and confidence needed to rehearse and perform with the world’s greatest conductors and musicians.
Performance
Every student at Brooklyn Youth Chorus has a chance to perform. It is a chance for students to demonstrate their knowledge and to be inspired (or inspire) other students. Training leads to a level of expertise often unrecognizable by a student’s parents or peers and can, frankly, make a kid feel like a star.
We end each semester with an all-school concert (Holiday Harmonies and Spring Sings) where each division performs a variety of songs they’ve learned throughout the semester.
The advanced students in our performing ensembles have a wide variety of performance additional opportunities throughout the year with professional artists of the highest caliber.