Welcoming singers from 30+ zip codes, we build community and invigorate our city through great choral music. The Community Chorus of Detroit is dedicated to serving the Metro-Detroit area, with an emphasis on the city of Detroit, by providing opportunities for the enjoyment of musical excellence to a community of both choristers and audience members, richly diverse in every way. The CCD is committ
ed to maintaining the highest levels of artistic and professional integrity through its selection of great music, its leadership and organizational development, its rigorous expectations, and its outreach, while providing an outstanding overall experience for its choristers. Our History
The Community Chorus of Detroit was founded in 2010, when the current CCD coordinator, Diane Linn, contacted renowned University of Michigan professor, Dr. Jerry Blackstone, Conducting Department Chair at U-M, to offer her vision of a community chorus in Detroit, to be conducted by a graduate student in choral conducting from the university. It is of note that the U-M conducting program, under Dr. Blackstone’s leadership, is regarded as the premier graduate-level conducting program in the US. Dr. Blackstone put Diane in contact with Joseph Baldwin at Northwestern University, who would begin work on his graduate studies in choral conducting at U-M in the fall of 2010. Joseph’s experience and interests were ideal for the position, and over the summer Joseph and Diane planned for the new chorus – initially named the Detroit Waldorf Community Chorus – and a fall concert program, to culminate in two holiday concerts at the Detroit Waldorf School in Detroit’s historic Indian Village. Joseph and Diane were in complete agreement about establishing a standard of excellence for the chorus in all areas, musical and organizational, that would allow it to become a great musical ensemble. The Detroit community enthusiastically embraced the idea of the new chorus from the start, with a full complement of singers and great attendance for the CCD’s inaugural concerts. While the chorus draws from a wide geographic area including the entire city of Detroit and many of its suburbs, with some members driving an hour to attend rehearsals, the group is proud to be located in and making a difference in the city of Detroit. The chorus is warmly welcoming, with a membership that is representative of the larger community – diverse in every way possible – and through music, the harmony in this diversity creates a meaningful bond of friendship. The original vision of a community chorus that would grow to become a major musical presence offering the finest in choral music in Metro Detroit has resulted in a dynamic collaboration that now includes an outstanding, professional-level group of volunteer staff members, and – singing in the heart of Detroit – a community chorus whose energy and future know no bounds.
