Community Choristers
About Our Program
Music Connections Foundation’s Community Choristers has a mission to enhance children’s lives through rich, engaging experiences in a quality singing ensemble. Music Connections believes that every child is musical, and that those innate abilities can be enhanced when children participate in Community Choristers. Further, MCF believes that children’s non-musical skills such as reading, literacy, social skills and even physical skills can be fostered through experience in our program.
The curriculum will include exposure to basic singing concepts such as breathing, posture, pitch matching, and rhythm, and the child’s “head voice” will be fostered and developed using proper singing technique. Basic music reading skills will also be introduced.
Weekly rehearsals and at least two performances per school year will be a regular part of the program; the performance experiences help children strive for excellence and understand “artistic-level” preparation, while doing so in an encouraging, non-pressured atmosphere.
NEW this 2018-19 School Year:
Music Connections is excited to offer varied offerings this year, including:
Weekly Tuesday rehearsals from 5:15-6:15 PM at Evangelical Free Church
Musical Theatre Session! For kids desiring experience in the world of Musical Theatre. Rehearsals will include music, drama, choreography, and aspects of production (props, staging, set design, etc.)
Jafar from Aladdin!
Once registered, your enrollment in Choristers is ongoing. Just let us know prior to the beginning of the new session or a new month if you want to discontinue.
Session Three and Four
January 8 – January 29
February 5 – April 30
Spring 2019 session themes!
Session 3 (4 Weeks) We will be working to build individual techniques which would be used in a production audition setting. Each student will leave the term having learned a solo they could sing in an audition setting and a poem they could present as a dramatic audition along with working on movement skills. We will spend approximately 20 minutes each week on each discipline. These skills will then be further developed in a production setting in Session 4.
Session 4 (12 Weeks) will then lead to a production entitled, “Music Changes the World.” In this session, we will learn songs which will be used both in our production but also in Habitat for Humanity’s annual Love Thy Neighbor concert. The Love Thy Neighbor concert will be held Sunday, April 28 and we will be required to attend at least one Saturday morning rehearsal leading up to the concert.
Other founding Choristers principles include:
- MCF Community Choristers encourages participation by girls and boys, Ages 6-12, throughout Central Illinois
- MCF Community Choristers seeks to promote socialization and “community” across all socio-economic and racial boundaries, and desires an all-inclusive composition in its ensembles.
- MCF Community Choristers will experience and perform a variety of music from all genres, cultures and religions.
- MCF Community Choristers Founding Ensembles are open to all children and will not require a vocal audition.
- MCF Community Choristers will at all times foster principles of respect and responsibility, both among members and in association with adults.
About Our Director
Angela Bargmann is a licensed K-12 music teacher who moved to Bloomington in 2010 from St. Paul, Minnesota where she taught and directed music in schools, churches and children’s theater companies. Since moving to Central Illinois, she has music directed shows for Corn Stock Theatre, Community Players, The Holiday Spectacular and serves on the Board of Directors for Prairie Fire Theatre. She currently directs choirs at Trinity Lutheran Church and teaches private voice and piano lessons. Angela lives in Bloomington with her two children – Nathan and Elizabeth. Angela is excited to combine her strengths in working with Music Connections Foundation, teaching Kindermusik, directing Choristers and running summer Musical Theatre camps. “Children have such great potential in music. Their capabilities combined with freedom and creativity in expressing ideas and emotions makes them a joy with whom to work! I love sharing my love of music with children in Choristers!”
