Commonwealth Youthchoirs
Starting in 5th grade, I was a part of Pennsylvania Girlschoir (PG), a subsection of Commonwealth Youthchoirs (CY). This professional children's choir tours globally and performs regularly at the Philadelphia Kimmel Center. While in the group, I performed for the Pope when he came to Philadelphia in 2015, traveled to Spain and South Africa, performed in the children's chorus in two operas for the Philadelphia Opera Company, performed off Broadway in Steven M. Fisher's Mandela: A New Musical, and premiered original works works like "Philadelphia Voices" with the Philadelphia Orchestra which we later performed in Carnegie Hall. During my junior and senior years, I served as Co-President of CY and as a member of their most advanced group, Anonymous 16.
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Philadelphia Voices
This project was one of the more difficult things I had sung at the time. Filled with varying time signatures and tempos, the composition was built around recordings of moments and people in the Philadelphia area. I also featured as a small solo in the final composition.
"Philadelphia Voices" is the series of City Symphonies created by Tod Machover and the Opera of the Future group at the MIT media lab. As part of Anonymous 16, I premiered the public launch of the project in May of 2017. This can be seen in the video below. Along with other Philadelphia based choirs, we went on to perform the full City Symphony at the Kimmel Center with the Philadelphia Orchestra and then to Carnegie Hall in New York City.
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Caroling Through the Galleries
Each December, the advance group of the Pennsylvania Girlchoir, the Motets, would perform at the Philadelphia Art Museum. We would walk through the different galleries, stopping to perform period accurate pieces in each space. This brought to life the art in each room and invited listeners to see them new perspective. This served as much of my initial draw to the tie between space and music, later leading to my master's thesis. Below are some videos taken at the event throughout the years.
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The Good Raised Up
CY premiered the piece in 2013 in the Johnson House and later performed in at events like the one reported by ABC Action News in the video to the right. This piece connected the audience to the history of the house through music. Once again this is a key moment in which I learned how a space can be brought to life by music, particularly when I at age 12 helped to premiere the piece on site. Later in 2014, I featured as one of the solos portraying the mother in the family.
This composition was written for treble chorus, violin, percussion, piano and several narrators. The story is centers a Quaker family who lived in the Johnson House in Germantown, PA in the 1850s and the night that they protected a group of escaped slaves from capture by a band of federal marshals. The video to the left shows clips of the original performance in the house.​
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Tours
SPAIN: SUMMER 2016
During the summer of 2016, I toured with the Pennsylvania Girlchoir to Spain, particularly Catalonia. We performed with local ensembles and in various cathedrals in Barcelona and other areas. Below to the right are some videos from this experience.
SOUTH AFRICA: SUMMER 2018
During the summer of 2018, I went on tour with the Commonwealth Youthchoir to South Africa. We traveled to Cape Town, Soweto, and Johannesburg singing with local groups and going to national landmarks. We learned many South African songs in multiple languages throughout the trip. To the right, there are videos from the experience. The second is from CBS covering our departure before the trip.
