Educational Mission and Performances

Group of singersThe CMC is deeply committed to the musical education of tomorrow’s performers and audiences. Each year, the Carolina Master Chorale performs for thousands of South Carolina schoolchildren, providing the only opportunity most of these children will have to experience a live performance of professional-level choral artistry. CMC members consider these among some of the most enjoyable and rewarding concerts of every season.

The Carolina Master Chorale performs regularly for the student bodies of Palmetto Bays and Forestbrook Elementary Schools in the Fine Arts Day concerts, before a thousand seventh graders at the Induction ceremony of the South Carolina Hall of Fame, and for several hundred students at the summer High School Music Camp at Coastal Carolina University. Our historical commitment to music education has included performances in schools throughout Horry County, sponsorship of the Carolina Youth Chorale, presentation of an annual children’s music workshop, and shared concerts with high school and collegiate choral ensembles.

During the February 17th & 18th concerts this season the CMC will welcome the winners of our Seventh Annual Carolina Master Chorale/ Coastal Carolina University Student Vocal Competition. Each year students compete on the campus of CCU for the chance to perform with the CMC. Each winner also receives a $400 scholarship co-funded by the CMC and CCU.

Beginning last season, the CMC established an ongoing relationship with the Boys and Girls Club of the Grand Strand. Members of the Chorale travel to the B&GCGS on a weekly basis to teach piano lessons to the children as well as working with the club’s singing group, the Impowerment Movement. These wonderful singers also performed with the CMC last February. The Chorale also provided the piano lesson books used by the children.

Finally, starting with our last season, the CMC has joined the Long Bay Symphony in sponsoring the Horry County Choral Music Teacher of the Year. We welcome the opportunity to recognize these outstanding educators in our public school system!

South Carolina Hall of Fame

Group of children listening to musicAmong many fruitful partnerships the Carolina Master Chorale has established, one of the most rewarding is its regular collaboration with the South Carolina Hall of Fame. The CMC has become the principal performing ensemble for the annual SC Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. Each year, the Hall of fame inducts one living candidate, who attends and participates in the multi-faceted educational event, and one posthumous candidate, who is represented by a relative, descendant, scholar, or other living authority. The CMC performs music that is somehow connected to the lives and work of the inductees.

In 2010, America’s most-performed opera composer, Carlisle Floyd, was nominated by the Carolina Master Chorale, and he was inducted in 2011. CMC Music Director Timothy Koch was chosen to give his introductory tribute. The inductees for whom the CMC has performed include:

Living Inductees

  • Richard W. Riley, former U.S. Secretary of Education, former South Carolina Governor
  • Pat Conroy, American Author
  • Matthew J. Perry, Federal Judge, Civil Rights Leader

Posthumous Inductees

  • William “Singing Bill,” father of “Shape-Note” singing
  • King Hagler, American Indian Chief, Leader of the Catawba Nation
  • Robert Smalls, Union Navy Captain, former Salve
  • Peter Horry, Revolutionary War Hero
  • Press Release from South Carolina ETV

ETV Producers to Profile South Carolinians

Singers singing to childrenETV has entered into an exciting partnership with the South Carolina Hall of Fame in Myrtle Beach to produce “mini-documentaries” about each of its inductees—contemporary and past citizens who have made outstanding contributions to South Carolina’s heritage, history, and progress.

Many of these documentaries will be expanded into full-length Carolina Stories programs. For example, each South Carolina astronaut who is in the Hall of Fame—Charles Duke, Ron McNair, and Charles Bolden—will have a separate documentary produced about him, but their stories also will be told in a special Carolina Stories program, “South Carolinians in Space” (working title) which will air in early 2012. Other Carolina Stories offerings about Hall of Fame inductees will include:

  • “South Carolinians in the Civil War” (Mary Chestnut, Wade Hampton, Robert Smalls)
  • “South Carolina Musicians” (William Walker, Dizzy Gillespie, Carlisle Floyd)
  • “South Carolina Businessman” (Elliott White Springs, Roger Milliken, Hugh McColl)
  • “Fritz Hollings and Strom Thurmond: South Carolina Statesman on the National Stage”
  • And Many More Over the Next Five Years