©1998-2008
The DeKalb Choral Guild, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

Who is the DeKalb Choral Guild?

Since its founding in 1978, the DeKalb Choral Guild has attracted talented choral musicians from throughout the metropolitan Atlanta area with professional backgrounds including public relations, medicine, sales and education. Only two other conductors have preceded our present conductor, Bryan Black, in the past thirty seasons: William O. Baker (1978-1992) and Mary Root (1992-2000). This stability of musical direction has strengthened the Guild's presence as a community arts organization, demonstrated by the many seasons of innovative and delightful programming given through the years. The Guild has also benefited from remarkably devoted singers, generous audience support and its commitment to welcome all people regardless of sex, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation or race. Membership is offered to singers based on an interview and audition encompassing theory, aural skills, vocal inventory and a brief prepared selection. Auditions are typically held near Labor Day and again in mid-Winter.

The DeKalb Choral Guild has participated in numerous community festivals and events such as the DeKalb International Choral Festival and the Emory Festival of Choirs. For several years, the Guild has sponsored a biennial festival of faith highlighting interdenominational choirs and the Chamber Singers (a select ensemble drawn from within the Guild) have sung at the Egleston Festival of Trees and Christmas at Callanwolde in period renaissance costume. The Guild also sponsored a "Music in the Schools" festival, inviting high school choirs for joint performances. Oglethorpe University named the DeKalb Choral Guild "Artists-In-Residence" in 1998 and features the Guild on its Arts and Ideas series presented in the Conant Center and the Emerson Student Center. Grants from the DeKalb Council for the Arts and the Georgia Council for the Arts (through the Georgia General Assembly) have been awarded to the Guild for several years based on its commitment to musical excellence and community involvement.  The Guild has presented two performances at the Piccolo Spoleto festival in Charleston, South Carolina.

The Guild has an extensive travel history. The Guild's first tour in 1983 included performances historic churches in Switzerland, Austria and West Germany. The Guild presented concerts in the Lutheran Church of the Ascension in Savannah and Christ Church in Washington, DC, in 1987. Crossing "the pond" again in 1988, the Guild participated in the Bristol International Music Festival during a tour of England and Wales. The Guild has had further tours in the Southeast, including trips to Alabama and Florida.  In September of 2005, the Guild returned to Europe with a tour of Germany and the Czech Republic.  And season 30 will end with a tour as the representative chorus of the state of Georgia for the American Festival of Music in Italy.

During the past several seasons, the Guild has had a number of notable musical accomplishments:

• The modern premiere (in May 2006) of a newly "rediscovered" work, Matins for the Virgin of Guadalupe, by Mexican composer Francisco Delgado -- a work lost in the archives of the cathedral of Mexico City for 150 years.
• A tour of Germany and the Czech Republic in September 2005 that included stops in Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Weimar, Rothenburg and Prague.
• Performances at the Piccolo Spoleto music and arts festival in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2005 and 2006.
• The commissioning of two new works:  "If Music be the Food of Love" from composer Donald McCullough in 2003 and A Celebration Mass (in tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) from Dr. Sharon J. Willis of Morris Brown College.
• A debut performance at Spivey Hall for the July, 2002, state convention of the Georgia Chapter of the American Choral Director's Association.
• The Atlanta premiere of Donald McCullough's Holocaust Cantata: Songs from the Camps at Atlanta's oldest synagogue, The Temple, on Yom Ha'shoah, the Day of Holocaust Remembrance.  The performance was broadcast on WABE on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.
• The Guild's selection as "Artists in Residence" by Oglethorpe University in 1998, taking part in the University's Arts and Ideas series.
• The start of a recording project to produce the Guild's first nationally distributable CD.

The coming season promises even more music, warm friendship, and engaging arts in our community.

Welcome!