The World Children’s Choir (WCC)
The Organization and Mission | A Unique Vocal Ensemble | History
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The World Children’s Choir mission is to serve as a voice for children – a voice that celebrates cultural diversity through music, builds positive international relations, and asks people to work together to create a peaceful, healthy world for all children. Children between the ages of 4 and 18 participate in one of four vocal ensembles based on age and skill. These ensembles rehearse separately and perform alone and together in a wide variety of concerts. The choir incorporates siblings and other family members, members of the community, and other arts organizations for special events. Every year, selected concerts involve fund raising for charities that benefit children, providing a way that the choir members can directly contribute to benefiting children around the world. Singers in the World Children’s Choir learn more than just music. We use music to instill the Choir’s values — courage, discipline, integrity, team, and compassion — multicultural appreciation, the power of the individual to make a difference, and the knowledge that together we can change the world.
The WCC enrolls 40-55 children during each school year. Enrollment is open to children in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and scholarships are provided for low- income families. The Artistic Directors believe that most children can learn to sing, so commitment to the rigorous rehearsal schedule and the mission of the choir are the key factors in acceptance into the choir. Families are heavily involved in performance, in supporting the highly disciplined rehearsal schedule and in volunteer work to support the organization.
The World Children’s Choir schedules four to five season concerts in local churches. In addition, the WCC is often invited to perform at a variety of venues and participates in public events and concerts that benefit children’s charities. WCC has performed: at the White House for several presidents and numerous international leaders; at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, DAR Constitution Hall, and Washington National Cathedral among other performance venues; at a number international agencies including the World Bank, the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, Inter-American Development Bank, Pan American Health Organization; and at several embassies. WCC also produces CD’s of its music, with some sales proceeds donated to children’s charities. It performs on local radio and cable television programs, and has participated in Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Armed Forces Network broadcasts.
The World Children’s choir has evolved as a musical ensemble distinct from most choral groups. Rather than working with traditional (straight tone) choral singing, the Artistic Director (Sondra Harnes) works to develop each child’s voice as a distinct and unique vocal instrument. With her beautiful soprano voice as a model, she works with children to discipline their voices to imitate the quality of sound they hear. “For some children it can take more than a year or two of practice before the brain develops all the connections necessary for the muscles and vocal structures to produce sound that can consistently match the desired pitch….but every child does it, and even parents who thought themselves unable to sing, learn along with their children.” The more experienced children become vocal models for the younger children. Associate Music Director, James Selway, provides the vocal model for older children able to sing in the lower vocal ranges.
In the ensemble, children learn to work as a team, blending their voices to achieve the highest and clearest quality and tone. At the same time, each child learns to contribute his or her own unique voice to the ensemble’s sound. Each child’s voice is treated as a solo voice contributing to the overall beauty of the music. Harnes’ expectations are high and the children often exceed them.
The Choir’s repertoire includes a vast array of vocal music ranging from the folk songs of diverse cultures around the world to classical arias, and including songs written specifically to communicate its mission. Harnes works with the children to help them understand the meaning of the words they sing, the stories behind the lyrics, the function of music in different societies, the ideas and emotions carried by the interweaving of words, melody, and rhythm. Using visual arts, poetry and other activities, the children explore their own ideas about peace, and work to express their concerns for the well being of children in the United States and around the world. “The children don’t want to sing an elegie. It makes them feel sad. We have to explore ideas about death with them. When they understand that music helps people endure and recover from grief, that it helps to memorialize loved ones, they can begin to explore the healing powers of the gift they give an audience by singing such music.”
The World Children’s Choir brings children and their families together to explore the power of children’s voices. This requires training each child’s voice, training children to work as a team, and engaging families in support of the discipline required to produce music at a professional level. It requires empowering the children themselves, so each child is encouraged to believe that he or she can always make a difference in the world, whether through singing or other activity.
The WCC was formed in 1990 in response to events surrounding the break up of the Soviet Union. Inspired by the audience’s reaction to the Soviet Union’s renowned Red Army Chorus singing God Bless America at the Kennedy Center Honors, Sondra Harnes envisioned an organization that would bring children and teens together to be a voice for children: children’s voices singing for peace and international friendship. Working with the parents of her voice students, she formed a non-profit organization and began recruiting children and families to bring the vision to life.
But the story goes back fifteen years further in time. Trained as an opera singer, Sondra Harnes faced a career choice between the travel demands of professional opera and the needs of her young son. She chose parenting. Over a period of years, she explored ways to re-invest her training in opera in a new career, teaching children. Learning about the Suzuki program through her son’s violin lessons, she wondered how this successful program of teaching very young children to play string instruments could be adapted to teach children to sing. As a piano teacher, she explored the program’s philosophy. As a parent volunteer and later a faculty member, she also began to work with groups of young children in Montessori schools to teach singing. “I had no training as a classroom teacher. I just kept trying different approaches and learned from the children what worked.” Her experience validated her belief that every child can sing with developmentally appropriate teaching. She developed a set of methods that proved highly successful and began teaching teachers to involve children in singing every day in school.
“I was trained to be a Diva, not a leader” says Harnes of her early responses to parents of voice students when they encouraged her to start a choir. But events in Eastern Europe in 1989-90 reminded her of the power and hope carried in the voices of children. She called on those parents for help and began to educate herself about running a non-profit organization. Over 15 years, the World Children’s Choir reinvented its organizational operations several times. Largely supported by modest tuition payments by choir families, concert tickets and performance fees, fundraising, contributed time by the artistic directors, and parent volunteer time, it has built a stellar reputation and performance portfolio, maintains a rigorous performance schedule including international travel, and has produced a number of recordings.