1) The opulent beauty of the Gilded Age. The location on Seventh Avenue near Central Park, not far from the Plaza Hotel, while considered far uptown in the 1890’s, was fast becoming a place of wealth and culture. As I approach Carnegie Hall, I can pick out the Italian Renaissance-style façade (although there are renovations going on now and the hall is wrapped in scaffolding and canvas). But the moment that still takes my breath away is when I enter the main concert hall (Stern Auditorium) and see the golden stage, the plush red seats of the Parquet and the rounded tiers rising up to the balcony. 

2) The unparalleled collection of historic performers whose sonic vibrations have reverberated from its walls. From Tchaikovsky’s appearance on Opening Night on May 5, 1891 to Yehudi Menuhin, Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, Pablo Casals, Yo-Yo Ma, Enrico Caruso, Maria Callas, Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, Gustav Mahler, Arturo Toscanini, Vladimir Horowitz, Leonard Bernstein, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterson, Sarah Vaughan, Gerry Mulligan, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Judy Garland, Nat King Cole, and The Beatles, there is not a more distinguished roster anywhere! (My apologies for the length, but those were just the names I had to include.) My own introduction to Carnegie Hall as an iconic concert venue occurred in about 1973 when I traded two Moody Blues albums for Chicago at Carnegie Hall, which even came with a schematic diagram of the hall and backstage area, and is still one of my favorites. 

It has been my great pleasure to hear some of the world’s greatest orchestras at Carnegie Hall, including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony and New York’s own Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. One of the most celebrated pieces ever written, Dvorak’s New World Symphony, was premiered there in 1893, with the composer in attendance. If you have a chance on May 21, visit the Rose Museum to experience a wonderful exhibit of these artists and more. We are now adding nearly 300 new names to the list of Carnegie Hall veterans!

3) The renowned acoustics. Carnegie Hall has been referred to as “the acoustic crown jewel of American concert halls.” The term “acoustics” in music generally refers to the sound properties of a space. The manner in which sound reverberates is related to the volume of open space in the room, the materials that make up the walls, floor, ceiling and seating, and the design (shape, curvature, reflection, etc.) of these structures.

The concept of ‘good acoustics’ is nuanced. There is not one definition of perfect acoustics. It also depends on the style, tempo and volume of the music that is being performed. For example, the sustained a cappella vocal music of the Renaissance benefits from a longer reverberation time, while the rapid phrases of Bach or Mozart benefit from the clarity of a shorter reverberation time. Many people enjoy attending the Chamber Singers annual Music for Youth concert in December at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Fairfield because of its wonderful echo. However, a rock concert in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York would result in chaos as the total amount of vibrations lingering in the air would overload the space. Carnegie Hall has what many consider to be the perfect proportion of deep resonance and excellent clarity.

The FCCC has performed at Carnegie Hall in the past with groups that have employed rock-concert sized sound systems. While volume does have a major impact on an audience, I don’t believe that highly amplified music makes the best use of Carnegie’s acoustics. It is for this reason that the FCCC Spring Concert will be primarily acoustic, with only the soloists, guitar and bass being lightly amplified. In fact, we will open the concert with two a cappella folk-style pieces, Will the Circle Be Unbroken and Mo Ghile Mear, which will allow the performers and audience alike to experience Carnegie Hall’s acoustics in all its glory! We hope to see you there!

Hello, my name is Marina Philips, and I have the great privilege of being the president of the board of the Fairfield County Children’s Choir. As we come to the end of our 27th season, I want to thank each one of you for helping us get through the uncertainties of these two past years, and for walking with us towards normalcy. Thank you for your continued support during these tough

times and for helping us get to this point – we are now ready to soar again.

Thanks to our choristers, conductors, and staff, our first in-person Winter concert was a huge success, as was our recent Broadway Show concert. Both concerts were held at the Klein Auditorium and we are now looking forward to our 25th-anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall on May 21st. The Hall has 2,800 seats, and you will be delighted to hear that we have already sold over 1,000 of them – this promises to be a very popular event! If you have already booked your tickets, thank you, and if you haven’t done so as yet, please do so as soon as possible. Don’t forget to tell your friends and family about the event, and to publicize it on all your social media channels: given how hard our choristers, conductors, and staff have worked very hard to get here, it would be truly wonderful to reward them with a view of a packed hall.

In other exciting news, The FCCC board has started on a very important journey toward making

our organization more diverse, equitable, inclusive, and accessible. We have drafted our first DEI

statement in the form of a Living Document that constantly evolves based on the needs of our

community. This document can be found on our website at FCCC's DEI Statement, and we look forward to your thoughts, comments, and suggestions.

Thank you for supporting the FCCC for its first 27 years, and we look forward to even greater

achievements in its next 27 years!

Marina Philips

Board President

This season we doubled the number of students in FCCC's Bridges Through Music, our community engagement program, which covers the tuition and expenses of children from underserved communities who embody the richly diverse backgrounds across Fairfield County. We also extended our 27-year-long commitment to ensure participation in our program without financial barriers through FCCC Tuition Assistance, never turning away a child for monetary reasons. 

Our tuition, which remains lower than the state and national average, account for only 58% of FCCC's operating funds. We will increasingly need donors' support to pay staff salaries, rent venues, fund weekly rehearsals, extend the growing need for technology, support new DEI initiatives, and continue programs like Bridges Through Music and FCCC Tuition Assitance.