Peterborough Children’s Choir

 
 

In the summer of 1997, Maria Belva and David Vernier offered a two week workshop to teach young singers the joy of making music together. Twenty singers participated. After ten days of rehearsal, a full length concert was presented, to a standing-room-only audience. Works of Britten, Vaughan Williams, and Handel were included in this concert.


This successful experience led Belva and Vernier to start a community children’s choir, providing instruction in vocal technique, music reading and rehearsal discipline. The ongoing opportunity for public performance encouraged personal and musical growth for over 150 young people.

 

our mission




  1. •To provide a place for young singers to share the rewarding experience of making music together.

  2. •To teach singing techniques, musicianship and the fundamentals of concert performance.

  3. •To perform the highest quality music available for young voices.

  4. •To help each chorister develop a lifelong appreciation of music.

  5. •To actively participate in the musical life of the community.

  6. •To become one of the finest treble choirs in New England.

 

Our Beginning


The Peterborough Children’s Choir was founded by Maria Belva and David Vernier in the summer of 1997. The purpose was to create an opportunity for young singers to develop their voices while learning fundamentals of musicianship, music reading, performance, and the joyful rewards of singing the highest quality music.

During the past thirteen years the choir has grown to 70 singers, grades 2-12, in four different groups: Trebles (grades 2-4), the Keene Youth Chorus (2-5), Choristers (5-8), and Cecilia Ensemble (9-12). The Skylarks is a training choir for children ages 5-7.

We have a strongly supportive parent group and a steadily growing community and regional audience. Our concerts feature the highest quality music for young voices, much of it specially composed for children’s choir.

We offer our own concerts each winter and spring, and have presented programs with the Conval High School Chorus and at Children in the Arts Day, Hancock’s Old Home Days, Rivermead, and for two benefit concerts in Antrim. We have traveled to Toronto to hear the internationally acclaimed Toronto Children’s Chorus and to perform with the Toronto Waldorf School choir. Our ensembles have performed in an original Peterborough Players musical and as the chorus of gingerbread children in Raylynmor Opera’s production of Hansel and Gretel. In 2004 we performed with the Monadnock Chorus under the direction of Dr. Carroll Lehman, and in 2005, with Judy Collins at the Colonial Theater in Keene, NH.

The Cecilia Ensemble made a concert tour of Italy in February, 2003. We stayed in Lucca, Florence, and Como, with a day excursion to Pisa. Our public concerts were performed in local churches and cathedrals. The girls became ambassadors of peace and goodwill by bringing their beautiful voices to another country, and experiencing some of the incomparable artistic treasures of one of the world’s oldest and richest cultures.

In 2005 the Cecilia Ensemble traveled to Germany and The Czech Republic where they performed for the public in Leipzig, Dresden, and Prague. In Usti nad Labem the Cecilia Ensemble performed with the Ustecki Detski Sbor, a children’s choir near Prague. In 2007 we traveled to Spain and performed a concert with Els Virolets of Palafrugell in Catalonia. The Cecilia Ensemble traveled to Sicily in February of 2010. A trip to Austria and Hungary is planned for 2012.

The Peterborough Children’s Choir is a non-profit organization. If you would like information about this group, if you know a young person who would like to audition, or you would be interested in helping to support us with a tax-deductible donation, please see our “Contact” tab for more information.

About the Choir