<p>Hello,
I posted this in the college search board earlier today & someone suggested I look here too. I am searching for a very strong college choral program that is open to non-music majors. More specifically, a school that offers multiple, challenging groups and performs sophisticated works. My major will be biology so a strong science program is my #1 criteria but chorus is next.
Thank you!</p>
<p>St. Olaf in Northfield, Minnesota (less than an hour south of Minneapolis) has many outstanding choirs (it has a men’s chorus, women’s chorus, and at least three or four mixed choirs). These are all open to non-music majors and an incredibly high percentage of the school participates in a music ensemble. </p>
<p>The academics at St. Olaf are very good. I can’t speak specifically to biology, but overall the academic standards are high and St. Olaf has long had one of the best undergrad math programs of any liberal arts college.</p>
<p>If you attend Johns Hopkins you can audition for the Peabody-Hopkins Chorus and participate alongside the conservatory music students. The music is very challenging. Last term they sang at Carnegie Hall with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.</p>
<p>Valparaiso University has 4 choirs with 3 different focuses. The group which would have something most like what you are looking for is the Chorale. They are a world-renowned chorus; they’re singing in Germany this summer for the 800th anniversary of the St. Thomas Church, and they are the only American choir going to that event. </p>
<p>There’s the Kantorei, which is the chapel choir, and we also sing sophisticated music. Then there’s the Men’s and Women’s Choirs, which don’t do the same kinds of pieces that the other two choirs do, but are still strong choral groups.</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen with my friends, we have a pretty good biology department, and people from all different majors sing in choirs at Valpo, not to mention band and orchestra participation as well.</p>
<p>I attend Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, IL (about 2 hours southwest of Chicago). We have 2 main choirs here. There’s the University Choir (U-choir for short), and the Collegiate Choir (Co-Choir for short). Co-Choir is the top choir, and they’re taking a spring break trip around the US and going to tour in Germany for May Term this year. Those choirs are both co-ed. Both U-Choir and Co-Choir are somewhere around 60 members each. Both are made up of music majors and non-music majors, although you do have to audition for both of them. I can tell you Co-Choir is going to be mostly music majors, and also mostly voice majors, not much of other music majors with another primary instrument in it, and it’s also mostly upperclassmen…only a few freshmen pass the audition into that one, so they’re usually in U-Choir, although there’s still upperclassmen in that as well. U-Choir rehearses 3 times a week for 50 minutes each, and Co-Choir rehearses 4 days a week for 75 minutes each day.</p>
<p>For other smaller vocal ensembles, there’s the Chamber Singers (co-ed), Touch of Class (female a cappella group), Suspended (male a cappella group), and Silence Interrupted (a new co-ed a cappella group). I think there might be a couple others too that I’m forgetting. Plus, we have a strong opera program, presenting one both in the fall and spring semesters, if you’re interested in that. The fall one was really, really good…I went to it twice! Of course, there’s several instrumental ensembles, but doesn’t sound like you’re interested in that, so I won’t list all them.</p>
<p>It just happens to be that Music & Science majors (Biology included!) are 2 of the top programs here…so you might want to look into Illinois Wesleyan. I’m a music major, and I have several friends who are Bio majors. There’s at least 5 Bio majors just on my floor here of ~30 people. Once I heard a statistic here that about 25% of all students are in some science or math major, so it’s pretty big. For Biology, if you’re interested in Bio/Pre-Med, we have about a 90% acceptance rate to med school for Bio majors, which is almost twice the national average acceptance rate. Also, our Center for the Natural Sciences (CNS) is awesome…one of the newer buildings, looks really nice!</p>
<p>Great information. Thank you!</p>