friends of vcs | Vienna Choral Society

Welcome To Our 31st Season!

August 30, 2018

Welcome to VCS’ 31st season! After a summer of dreaming, we are more than ready to sing for you. And as always, our artistic director, Mike Horanski has a unique and fun repertoire that is going to be as wonderful for us to sing as we hope it’ll be for you to enjoy!

We’re looking forward to singing the music of Sarah Quartel, the rare, 30-something, female contemporary composer. We’re also looking forward to singing poetry by Euan Tait, set to music by composer Kim Andre Arnesen – both modern contemporary masters. And finally, we can’t wait to get into the music of established and respected composers – Bach, Bernstein, and yes, The Beatles – all of whom started out as rabble rousers, rebels, and risk takers. (Yes, even Bach!)

If you loved the last two seasons under Mr. Horanski’s baton, you’re going to have a great time with this one.

As we have for the last two seasons, we look forward to having emerging artists, youth musicians, and music students join us at every concert. As a teaching choir, this is how we cultivate tomorrow’s artists and audience. It’s how tomorrow’s marquee names learn to own their spotlight. It’s how tomorrow’s music patrons develop everything from concert etiquette to a discriminating ear.

At VCS, we do all of that. And we do it with your support.

At a time when the arts have to fight for every dollar, you help us cultivate the next generation of artists and art lovers. Your support builds rare common ground and had-to-be-there moments that appear nowhere else in our lives. None of it happens without you. So we hope you’ll join the 2018-19 Friends of VCS campaign, which runs September 1-30, 2018.

As always, it’s a great deal for the benefits. All donors get discounts with our partners Caffe Amouri, Cocoa Vienna, and – we’re excited to report – Bards Alley in Vienna! This season, all donors will also get entered into a raffle – one lucky winner will get to go to dinner with a friend. On us. Coffee, candy, wine, books, dinner, and music. What’s not to love? Become a Friend of VCS today. We promise you won’t regret it!

Donate online, or send us an old fashioned check to The Vienna Choral Society, PO Box 310, Vienna, VA 22183.

However or at whatever level you’d like to become a Friend of VCS, we are happy to have you here and sing for you.

Please join us this season!

P.S. Are you on our mailing list? Take a minute, sign up – be the first to know all the fun things!

Thank You For A Wonderful Season!

May 21, 2017

via Flickr Creative Commons

Thank you so much for coming out last night — it was the perfect ending to an amazing first season with Mike Horanski, our artistic director. We loved singing for you, and cannot wait to do it again next season!

We are already planning out the 2017-18 season and are excited by the possibilities! If you’d like to book season tickets or become a Friend of VCS — and enjoy the many benefits that come with being a Friend — drop us a line at info@viennachoralsociety.org. We’d love to hear from you.

Again, thank you and we hope you have a wonderful summer.

And The Season Begins!

September 7, 2016

I trust your summer was good? Ours was incredibly eventful! In the last month especially, we’ve done what usually takes a leisurely few months, years even: Getting to know our new artistic director, Mike Horanski and accompanist, Melvin Goodwyn, and helping them get to know (some 90 of) us. Most important, we rolled up our collective sleeves to support Mike as he hit the ground running to plan the season.

Planning the VCS season is something that usually happens between March and June over a multitude of coffees, email conversations, and random texts. It takes talking and dreaming and time and perspective. But for Mike, and for us, there was no doubt that the 2016-17 season would be about joyous community through music.

It’s safe to say that we are all ready for an antidote to the unsettling and polarizing times in which we find ourselves. Every last one of us can benefit from more places where we put aside differences to share more experiences that bring us closer. Everyone today could use more joy in their community.

At VCS, we know for a fact that few things accomplish that goal like an inspiring, shared music experience. We see that every Tuesday when our singers leave rehearsals energized to tackle the week. We hear it after every concert when you tell us that you were inspired by what you heard, and are reassured that there is a community that shares your experience.

Which is why we begin this season with The Call Of Music and end with It’s A Grand Night For Singing. In December, it will be our pleasure to sing Sounds Of The Season. And our spring concert, which has developed into a moment of quiet but rich music, will feature challenging, classical, and contemplative repertoire in a Requiem For The Living.

It is going to be a wonderful, inclusive, uniting, joyous, uniquely VCS experience once again. Please join us!

The best way to be part of the VCS experience is to become a Friend of VCS. We run this annual fundraising campaign each September to raise funds from individuals who love the arts and wish to support us. As a sign of our appreciation for your support, every Friend, at any level of donation, receives:

Early notice of special events and pre-concert talks.
Discounts at participating retailers. This year we are delighted to tell you that in addition to Caffe Amouri and Donatos Pizza, Cocoa Vienna has joined us as a participating retailer!
NEW! We’re also very excited to tell you that this year, we are introducing a special benefit. Become a Friend of VCS, and we’ll give you a Companion Certificate – one free ticket to bring a friend or companion to see and experience any one VCS concert.

Friends who give over $100 are treated to a complimentary season ticket and reserved seating.

Additionally, all Friends are thanked on our website and in our concert programs.

Becoming a Friend of VCS is very easy. Talk to friends in the choir, give online, or send us a check made out to Vienna Choral Society with “Friends of VCS” in the memo line. Our address is PO Box 310, Vienna, VA 22183.

No matter the level at which you become a Friend or join us on show night –THANK YOU. We very much hope to see you this season. You are who we sing for, and who we can’t do without.

Here’s to another season of music, joy, and community!

Friends of VCS – We’re Half Way There!

September 23, 2015

Lots to share with you this week!

For starters, we’re counting down to our first concert. We sing…

ANIMAL CRACKERS
4:30 pm, Saturday
October 24, 2015
Vienna Baptist Church
(541 Marshall RD SW, Vienna, VA 22180)

Tickets, including season tickets, are now on sale.

Tickets are Adults – $25, and Seniors (65+) and Students (15 – 18) – $20. Youth younger than 15 attend free with a ticketed patron. We’ll have tickets at the door, but get them now – online or through choir members – and you can skip the line on show night*.

You probably already know that we are partnering with HART (Homeless Animals Rescue Team) for this concert. HART is a wonderful organization that can’t help but tug at your heartstrings. Hey, there’s a reason cat videos sometimes rule the Internet! We’ll tell you more about HART in a couple of weeks, but today, we’d love your help supporting them in WTOP’s Click For A Cause. Help HART win $30K – click HERE, scroll down to find them, and “like” HART before 5 pm EST on Friday, September 25, 2015.

Last but not least, we’d love your help too. Your generosity has helped us get past the half way mark on our ambitious $10K goal for this season. But we still need to make at least $4K more, hopefully in the next week. We can absolutely do this!

Please consider supporting the Friends of VCS so we can continue being the excellent, fun, and awesomely programmed community choir you’ve come to expect. And to the Friends who have already given, we cannot thank you enough. [Read more…]

Friends of VCS Fall 2015 – We’re A Third Of The Way There!

September 17, 2015

Every fall we invite you to join the Friends of VCS. Why? Very simply – the arts enrich our lives immeasurably. And you make it possible for us to enrich the community with more music.

Our playlists kick start start the party, calm us down in traffic, keep us going to deadline, and tell us who we are. No matter who we are – young, old, professional, amateur, listener, or performer – the music enriches our happiness, and says what we can’t when we don’t have the words.

We’re particularly cognizant of that last part.

We live busy, sometimes anxious lives in this neighborhood. Everyone pays some attention to the news. We here in the VCS community? We pay extra special attention to refugee crises, government shutdown talk, deployments, elections, and papal visits.

When we’re stuck in yet another Metro delay, or waiting on word of loved ones, the music in our ear buds are what keep us civilized. Sane, even. And when we’re overwhelmed by events, the music says everything we can’t, and gives our emotions somewhere to go. [Read more…]

Friends Are In For More Treats

September 2, 2015

We were so excited to kick off our 28th season last week. In addition to welcoming several new singers and some returning singers (many loud and happy reunions!), we are once again looking at a great set of concerts.

This season will once again feature the carefully, joyously, and fabulously programmed repertoire you’ve come to expect from maestra Jennifer Rodgers. The energy and momentum of this chorus, so largely reflected in and supported by your generosity through the Friends of VCS, has allowed us to invest in “upping our artistic game.” We have expanded our choral repertoire and singing opportunities, deepened our artistic partnerships, and prioritized time spent on our choral sound and technique. And we are ready to pour all of that into our 2015-2016 season.

We’re diving in with a Concert for a Cause right up front. Animal Crackers will be presented in partnership with HART (Homeless Animals Rescue Team) for our October concert. We’ll have cats, birds, panthers, cows and kookaburras at the show. Well, in the music… HART will likely stick to puppies. That’s right – puppies! [Read more…]

One Last Day

September 29, 2014

It’s almost October! Which means we, at the choir, officially enter concert month: That time of year when we note-pound extra hard, sometimes obliviously so, en route to rehearsal, much to the amusement of people around us in traffic.

You are welcome.

This also means we have one more day left in our annual Friends of VCS campaign. If you haven’t yet, you can still support us for another 24 hours and enjoy several benefits for the rest of the season. If you are one of the many supporters who have already generously given, we cannot thank you enough for your support. And we look forward to sharing the Road Trip with you in a few weeks.

We’ll have tickets at the door, but they are are available online, or through a choir member. And we highly encourage you to get them before show night if you can.

Tickets are:

$25 for adults
$20 for seniors (65+) and students (15 – 18)
Youth age 14 and younger attend free with a paying audience member

Season tickets are also available ($85 for adults, $70 for seniors).

Join us, won’t you? Get your tickets online, or better yet, take advantage of our Friends program, and get a season ticket plus benefits!

Why Become A Friend Of VCS?

September 10, 2014

“What do you do with the money VCS raises? Why should I give?”

It’s a fair question that a new singer raised about our fall “Friends of VCS” campaign. I’ve gotten that question several times in the four years I’ve been involved with VCS. And my answer has never changed: VCS asks for your support because we strongly believe that we are ALL better off with great music and a commitment to the arts.

Why VCS? That’s a slightly longer answer.

[Read more…]

It’s October! AKA Concert Month

October 4, 2013

Jennifer Rodgers Beach leading rehearsal.

And this week, with the arrival of October, we reached what Jennifer Rodgers Beach calls the “end of the beginning.” Meaning, we’re in concert month, we’ve gone through open rehearsals, we’ve sung the music a few times, we are now in note-pounding territory. Which means it’s time to report on the one-liners and random moments of rehearsal that are amusing even as they make no sense out of context. Here’s a sample from the October 1, 2013 rehearsal: [Read more…]

Coffee House Concert: Counting Down and Buying Tickets!

October 1, 2013

Artwork by Steven Keen of Keen Method

Here it is folks! The poster and details for our season opening concert, Coffee House Concert, at 7:30 pm, Saturday, October 26, 2013 at UUCF.

Tickets are now online.

All tickets, including SEASON TICKETS are available online until the morning of the show, after which we’ll have them at the door.

And if you’d like to become a Friend of VCS for some fabulous benefits – our fun decal and reserved seating, anyone? – you can still do that too.

We’ll have more details about the concert next week but here’s what you need to know: We’ll sing much loved contemporary pieces from The Beatles to Billy Joel, with The Turtles and Cindy Lauper thrown in for good measure. Oh yeah, and a good caffeine buzz and nibbles courtesy of our local partners – Caffe Amouri and Whole Foods Vienna.

Humming and candle apps of your choice are most welcome.