On July 13, 2023, we got the wonderful news that Lux was selected as a Performing Choir at the American Choral Director's Association's (ACDA) Eastern Regional Conference. Eight months later, on March 2, 2024, we'll get the chance to perform a program surveying some of our favorite pieces from the last four years of concert programs in front of hundreds of choral professionals from all across the East Coast and beyond.

We are so excited at the opportunity to give back to a community of educators who’ve made us who we are. Each one of us in Lux has a number of choral educators to thank for imbuing a passion and building the skill to perform at such a high level, and this is just one way for us to say thank you to those teachers and others like them.

For all the excitement that comes with this incredible opportunity, there is also great cost in bringing a professional chamber choir all the way up to Providence, RI. ACDA is unable to help defray the costs of transportation, lodging, musical compensation, and per diem. In order to take advantage of this opportunity, and to perform further from our home base than we've ever traveled, we've set a fundraising goal of $10,000 to help get Lux to Providence! 

What's the Plan?

Preparations
Our journey to Providence starts well before March 2—in fact, it starts now: with us spreading our excitement and asking for your help! We've gotten incredibly kind messages from mentors, friends, loved ones, and supporters of all kinds since the announcement in July, and we are so thankful to be surrounded by such a supportive community. On top of that, our concert program has already been picked out and approved by ACDA so that they can begin to prepare their materials for the conference.

Musically, our journey begins in early February, when we'll have our first rehearsal with the roster for this program! After assessing singer availability and solidifying our roster, we'll set our rehearsal dates and dig back into our repertoire. Since we'll be using rep we've performed before, many of our singers should be familiar with a good portion of it already. A large part of securing our roster has to do with the compensation we're able to offer: covering their transportation, lodging, and per diem all on top of musical compensation. For many professional singers, much like any other contractors, the compensation and experience of the project are weighed against the amount of time and work needed for the project itself when taking a new project under consideration.

Conference Weekend
Once rehearsals have finished and we've fully polished the program, we'll all travel via train to Providence, Rhode Island, in the evening on Friday, March 1. Once we've arrived late night in Providence, we'll get settled in all of our lodging situations, whether hotel or homestay, and meet back up Saturday morning. The next morning, we'll meet up for a short breakfast, and gather at Grace Episcopal Church for a 9:30AM rehearsal—our only 30 minute period in the venue before the performance. After that, some free time for the singers, and we'll meet back up at 11:30AM for a 12PM performance, when we'll share a program of some of our favorite and most successful repertoire over the last four years in front of choral professionals from all over the East Coast!

After the performance, we'll be sure to spend some time meeting with and thanking the audience from the conference. Once we've had time to change, decompress, and get some lunch, we'll have some time to explore the city before getting back on the train to be back home Saturday night.

What's On The Program?
We're very excited to feature a sort of "Best Of" from our last four years of concerts for this program. When we proposed the repertoire to ACDA, here is the program description we included:

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Lux is a group founded from newness. The choir began as a group of seven high school students—new to choral music and inspired by the choral experiences of their past—and have emerged a professional choir committed to creating opportunity for the next generation of passionate choral musicians, and to promoting diversity & accessibility to our beautiful art form.

This program features, and is inspired by, a piece which won Lux’s 2021 Composition Contest: Cole Reyes’s Alleluia (The Rose). For Reyes, the Latin and English in the text symbolize the old and the new interacting together, which was particularly poignant at the time during which he wrote the piece; as we all celebrated important holidays and other milestones at home, with or sometimes without family. Many organizations and industries, especially in the choral world, still feel the ripples—both positive and negative—of this re-examining of traditions.
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In this concert, we build on Reyes’s interweaving of old and new traditions, beginning with Cecilia McDowall’s Give Me Some Music, a piece which places puirt à beul, a Gaelic form of “mouth-music” traditionally used to accompany dancing, in a new musical context. Hyo-Won Woo’s O Magnum Mysterium treats a classic text with a fresh musical setting, while Paul Mealor’s Te Lucis Ante Terminum adds onto that idea, combining both a known text and its associated chant melody with new and unexpected harmonies. Andrea Gabrieli’s Quem Vidistis, Pastores lends a different perspective to the shifting of traditions: The composer’s friendship with Orlando di Lasso influenced him to blend Lasso’s Franco-Flemish style with the sensibilities of the new and emerging Venetian School—becoming an integral part of the development and eventual prominence of this new musical tradition. We close with the inspiration for the thread which weaves throughout our program: Reyes’s Alleluia (The Rose)—a piece which we've had the joy of including in our repertoire since premiering it.

Support Our Journey

​There are many costs associated with traveling to, staying in, and performing in Providence, and we need your help! From the trip to and from Providence via train and lodging overnight on Friday March 1, to compensating the musical work required of our singers for rehearsals and the performance, to per diem for meals and other living costs while away from home, this wonderfully fulfilling and worthwhile project could cost as much as $10,000 as we bring up to 18 singers with us for this performance.

Whether $5 or $5,000, your recurring donation plays a large part in the success & sustainability of incredible opportunities like these, whether outreach performances in- and out-of-state, recording projects like that with acclaimed composer Paul Mealor in July of 2022, or educational opportunities for students pursuing a musical future. We sincerely hope you'll consider making a contribution to help fund this project, and graciously ask that you consider what you might be able to give on a recurring basis to continue to help fund projects like these, and much more as our organization grows.

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How Can I Help?

There are lots of different ways to help in our campaign! The first and most direct way to help is to donate towards the cause to get us up to Providence, have safe lodging while there, and to compensate our singers for their musical talents. How else can you help?

1. Share this page! Do you know someone who could help support our cause? Reach out to them individually or by sharing on social media.
2. Do you have connections to someone in Providence? We're in search of folks who might be willing to house two or more of our singers overnight on Friday, March 1.

Watch

When you give to Lux, you're helping us spread the joy & beauty of high quality choral music in our home of the Washington, DC metro area and well beyond. In our time so far we've performed over 16 programs from DC to Maryland to Pennsylvania, released three full-length albums and three singles which are played globally, and created hours of educational opportunity through our online and in-person education initiatives.

​The video playlist below includes highlights from our past and current projects. We hope you enjoy these glimpses of our past as we create the future together.