Brooklyn Youth Chorus
The Grammy® Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus (BYC), now in its 17th season, is one of the country’s leading children’s choruses. Led by founder and artistic director Dianne Berkun, BYC choristers study and perform a range of music in classical and non-classical genres. The Chorus has toured Austria, Russia, the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany; performed at venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden and the White House; and appeared on television shows including ABC’s 2007 holiday special Elmo’s Christmas Countdown with Alicia Keys, The Today Show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Late Show with David Letterman, Saturday Night Live and The Michael Jackson 30th Anniversary Celebration.
This year marks BYC’s seventh consecutive season with the New York Philharmonic. Collaborations with the orchestra began in 2002, with the Chorus’s performance under Music Director Lorin Maazel in the world premiere of John Adams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning On the Transmigration of Souls, for which BYC received a Grammy® Award. Other performance highlights include the 2000 North American premiere of Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 5 with the Brooklyn Philharmonic and Dennis Russell Davies and the 2008 performance of Powaqqatsi with Mr. Glass and his ensemble at Prospect Park’s Celebrate Brooklyn Festival. Additionally, BYC was featured in the 2003 New York premiere of John Adams’s El Niño with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen, as well as Carnegie Hall appearances in 2007 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine and in 2008 performing Bernstein’s Mass with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Marin Alsop. In addition to performing with distinguished conductors and orchestras, BYC has sung with major artists such as Elton John, Barbara Cook, Lou Reed, John Legend, Natasha Bedingfield, Fantasia Barrino, Ray Davies, Judy Collins, Andrea Bocelli, and the Mark Morris Dance Group. BYC’s commissioning program has produced new works for youth chorus by noted composers including Fred Hersch, Kirk Nurock, Nico Muhly, Phil Kline Andrew Lippa, Paul Moravec, David Lang, James MacMillan, Jackson Berkey and Daniel Brewbaker.
Choristers receive training at the Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy (BYCA), which provides a performance-based vocal music education program to a diverse group of over 260 students annually in five division groupings. With its founding principles of artistry, diversity and community, BYCA ensures that its unique program is accessible to students from all walks of life through a generous scholarship program.