A Message from our Founding Artistic Director, Dr. William Gorton:

Warmest Greetings of the season, Friends! As we all celebrate our blessings this year, we think of the cherished values of family, and friends, gratitude for our prosperity, our health, and for things that make us feel connected, like the magic of music! As a socially-conscious performing arts organization, the Greater Philadelphia Choral Society seeks to serve the Philadelphia region with inspiring music, education, and outreach services to at-need folks in our community. To this end, we prepare beautiful and inspiring concerts to share with local audiences, concerts that set the mood of wonder, joy, and celebration of this time of year, and similarly in the spring. In addition, we collect non-perishable food items for local food pantries at the door of our concerts. Last week, I hand-delivered vetting documents for our singers to enter the Camden County Correctional Facility to sing carols for the inmates in December. We are also prospectively planning educational outreach to low-income community schools in Camden County (the scope of the programs will depend upon funding). We are also making invitations to local school choirs to participate with us in our concerts, affording young people an opportunity to experience the joy of making music with world-class musicians. We collaborate with high-caliber musicians from our region, many of which perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra and other excellent regional ensembles.

As you are surely aware, these programs and services are just the tip of the iceberg for an organization like GPCS. The various elements that make us function are many in number, and include things such as the hiring of accompanying ensembles and soloists, rehearsal accompanists, the artistic director, choral section leaders, designing and printing of programs, social media design, and postings, transportation, rental of scores and instruments, rental of rehearsal and performances spaces, website services and memberships, recording engineers for audio and video, and so forth. We have the tools in hand to realize great aspirations in the quality and scope of our musical performances, as well as in service to the community; but we can’t do this without your help. Please consider becoming an integral part of this worthy endeavor by supporting us with your generous donation. We also hope to see you at our concerts, and if you are a singer, we welcome your interest in participating with us in standard-setting music-making! We are so fortunate to love what we do and to share beauty, hope, inspiration, and understanding with all whom we touch. Thank you for helping us be a bright light in our region.

Blessings of the season to you and yours!

William Gorton, DMA