The Seattle Choral Company's
History & Accomplishments

"The versatile Seattle Choral Company has more strings to its bow than most realize when attending one of its excellent concert performances in Seattle. For instance, you’ll hear its voices on dozens of promotional film tracks, from King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia to Planet of the Apes. When you go to see Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Carmina Burana, the voices are, again, those of the SCC.

The 100-plus voices of the 26-year-old chorus are knit together by the vision and leadership of Fred Coleman, its founding conductor. Coleman has always had an adventurous mind when it comes to programming, and the SCC’s latest concert showed it at Benaroya Hall Saturday afternoon."

Philippa Kiraly, The Gathering Note, April 2008

Started in 1982 by Founding Director, Fred Coleman, the Seattle Choral Company has become the Puget Sound region's leading symphonic chorus and one of Seattle's most accomplished and respected choral organizations. After their 1992 December holiday concert, The Seattle Post Intelligencer praised founding director Fred Coleman for "eliciting a beautiful choral sound from the singers." In March of 1993 The Seattle Weekly praised the Company's "beautifully conceived performance (of Brahms' A German Requiem) — tender and joyful, upbeat, and even triumphant."

In June of 1994, The Seattle P-I again applauded the conductor and chorus for a performance which was "first class in its own right. . . At this concert, Coleman elicited performances which were exciting, vital, even thrilling to hear." On June 1 of 1998, The Seattle P-I wrote, "Seattle Choral Company's performance reached a clear, sweet purity of tone (and) sounded exquisitely beautiful . . . It became a moving experience . . . Again and again, the different voices would come together on a perfectly pitched chord, such as can give intense pleasure."

In November of 2001, the Seattle Choral Company was proud to present a major concert event as part of the City of Seattle's grand Sesquicentennial Celebration, honoring the 150^th birthday of the founding of Seattle. For that occasion, the SCC commissioned a new choral work, titled, Seattle, by New York composer, William Hawley. Mr. Hawley chose as his text the famous 1854 Treaty Oration of Chief Seattle and scored the work for two choruses, large symphony orchestra and four soloists.

Now celebrating their twenty-seventh season, the Company will attract over 100 volunteer singers, 65 professional instrumentalists and numerous distinguished vocal artists from the Pacific Northwest. We are proud to have added to our artistic staff this season six resident vocal artists, who comprise a faculty of vocal soloists and instructors.

The Company has appeared on several occasions as guest artists in Pacific Northwest Ballet's dance productions of Carmina Burana and Hail to the Conquering Hero, the latter featuring choruses by George Frideric Handel. The SCC has joined the Seattle Symphony Orchestra at Benaroya Hall for performances of Those Glorious MGM Movie Musicals and Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. In December of 2006, the SCC returned to Benaroya Hall as guest artists of the Seattle Symphony in Holiday Pops with Doc Severinsen and New Year's Eve with the Seattle Symphony.

The SCC has begun the current season as invited participants in the tenth anniversary celebration of Benaroya Hall, called A Day of Music and Art. For the occasion, the SCC performed Gabriel Fauré’s magnificent Requiem together with the Watjen Concert Organ and received a warm, standing ovation from music lovers in attendance.

In October of 1994, the Company released its first compact disc recording titled, The Moon Is Silently Singing, including contemporary cathedral works by such news-making composers as Arvo Pärt (Estonia), Henryk Górecki (Poland) and John Tavener (England). The album was among the Top Ten best selling classical CDs in Greater Seattle during 1994. To date the album has sold over 4,000 copies in North America, and internationally via the Internet.

In October of 1997 the Company issued its second compact disc recording titled, When the Morning Stars Sang Together—a collection of a cappella works by twentieth century composers—which the Seattle P-I recently praised by stating, "The singing is precise, rich and full of grace, with excellent balance and clear high voices."

In June of 1999, the SCC recorded Carl Orff's Carmina Burana with full orchestra and soloists and the CD was released in time for their Millennium Celebration on New Year's Eve, 1999. About the album, The Seattle Times wrote: "This Carmina Burana packs the punch of a live performance, with first-rate soloists and an orchestra including some top local players. Fred Coleman draws a lot of excitement, power and well-focused singing from his performers."

On the first anniversary of the 9/11 attack, the Company was joined by the Cascadian Chorale, the Bellevue Chamber Chorus, and the Bellevue Philharmonic Orchestra in a public memorial to the victims of the September 11 terrorist attack. This free public event was hosted by the Seattle Choral Company at Bellevue Square and featured the renowned Requiem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as part of a worldwide series of memorial concerts, called the Rolling Requiem.

With vision and a passion for music, members of the Seattle Choral Company have sought to encourage an active interest in the performing arts and to foster community and understanding in the Pacific Northwest and around the world. Company members shared their talents in such faraway places as the former Soviet Union (1986) and at the 1988 World Exposition in Brisbane, Australia. In 1988, SCC members were proclaimed Seattle's Cultural Ambassadors to the Australian Bicentennial by then Seattle Mayor Charles Royer. The group received still further recognition for their Australian visit by a resolution drafted by the Washington State House of Representatives.

The Seattle Choral Company is honored to have been funded for twelve consecutive years by the prestigious Arts Fund, a consortium of the region's largest corporate supporters of the arts. We have also received independent local support from the Microsoft Corporation, The Boeing Company, Clark Nuber, SAFECO Insurance Companies, Lane Powell Spears Lubersky, the Washington Mutual Foundation, and the Nesholm Family Foundation. The SCC also receives funding support from the United Way of King County.

Members of the SCC have made city-wide appearances at such places as the Downtown Out-to-Lunch Series, the Argosy Christmas Ship, the Westlake Center, the Bellevue Wintergarden, the Boeing Museum of Flight, the Museum of History and Industry, the Bumbershoot Festival, Seattle Jaycees' Christmas Candlelight Carol (to benefit Northwest Harvest), and the Goodwill Games Welcoming Ceremony.

The Seattle Choral Company has recorded soundtracks for Public Television (Death: the Trip of a Lifetime), and NBC (Crime and Punishment and Noah's Ark). The chorus is in demand for film trailer recordings, aired at theaters and on national television. Selections from their recent album, Unearthed, have been heard in promotions for a number of motion pictures, such as Planet of the Apes, Minority Report, Spider Man, and The Time Machine. Promotional music for Pirates of the Caribbean, The Return of the King, The Alamo, Van Helsing, King Arthur, Spider Man II, King Kong, and The Chronicles of Narnia now features the voices of the Seattle Choral Company, as well.

Fred Coleman has shaped the Seattle Choral Company into the premiere symphonic chorus of greater Seattle. His finely tuned yet spirited performances have captured the praise of audiences and critics alike. Maestro Coleman has led the SCC on a journey through many of the most glorious choral works ever written—including the Berlioz Te Deum, Prokofieff's Alexander Nevsky, Orff's Carmina Burana,Beethoven's Choral Symphony, Haydn's Creation, and Bach's St. John Passion. He has also championed America's finest contemporary choral composers, bringing to local audiences a number of significant new choral works, offering area listeners their first live hearing of such works Arvo Pärt's Te Deum, Phillip Glass' Itaipu, Hawley's Songs of Kabir, Roxanna Panufnik's Westminster Mass, and Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna. Additionally, he has supported gifted Seattle composers, such as Donald Skirvin and Bern Herbolsheimer. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently applauded this commitment, stating "it's not surprising that Coleman…would devote an entire program to contemporary music. He has long been an advocate for living composers."

On March 9, 1996, the SCC Chamber Choir was honored to have been invited to perform in Spokane for the Northwest Division Convention of the American Choral Director's Association, joining the finest school and college choirs in the region of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Alaska.

The artistic growth of the organization—as well as our programming innovations—have attracted new audiences to live concerts in increasing numbers. On December 31, 1991, the Company began a new community tradition for the celebration of New Year's Eve at the elegant 5th Avenue Theatre. This event has proven to be enormously popular among patrons seeking an alternative social activity at this time of year. For three holiday seasons, the Company presented Christmas at Benaroya Hall, a new community tradition featuring a wide array of classical masterworks and traditional holiday music presented in the wondrous acoustics of the new Benaroya Hall. This concert format is patterned after the successful Christmas with the Atlanta Symphony & Chorus, as designed by the late Robert Shaw. The Seattle concerts have been annual sell-outs, ensuring another new holiday tradition for Seattle area listeners.

The Seattle Choral Company looks to the future with a record of successful and enriching performances and artistic achievement.