Project Grant

It is our expectation that this concert will be a spectacular experience for the audience and performers alike, what with the grandeur of the music, the variety of choirs and instrumentation and the setting/acoustic of the cathedral. As in years past, this concert will inspire all involved and set the tone for the holiday season. GLORIA will be a festive musical offering of the highest quality that is affordable for Central Minnesota Residents. The chosen music, consisting of complex arrangements and instrumentation, will provide an excellent opportunity for artistic growth and increased technical ability for all performers involved. Members of the Cantabile Girls’ Choir will have the unique experience of collaborating with seasoned adult singers. It is our hope that it will be an especially profound experience to the youngest/newest members of the Cantabile Girls’ Choir who have never previously performed with adults or elaborate accompaniments. We intend to cultivate an appreciation of the benefits of lifelong singing in the young performers and audience members. Audience members young and old will be enriched through participation in carols with the massed choir. They will feel part of a culture and community that values and revels in artistic expression through song. With GLORIA, Great River Chorale will seek the following quantitative outcomes: An increase in audience members who are experiencing Great River Chorale and our annual holiday concert for the first time. An increase in audience members primarily attending to see Great River Chorale perform (not a collaborating group) due to broader marketing efforts and publicity, and a break with the traditional collaborating group. An increase in community support for Great River Chorale, evident through program ad sales and concert sponsorships. A minimum of 350 attendees at the new, one time only concert in the new location with the different format (due to the change in traditional collaborative partners).A questionnaire/survey designed to capture feedback about concert programming will be provided to audience members in the concert program. An incentive may be proposed in order to increase participation in the survey. We are keenly interested in knowing how audience members find out about our concerts, so we will ask them to note where they read or heard about GLORIA. We will ask if the experience was affordable compared to other cultural offerings in the area. In addition to the questionnaire, Great River Chorale members will be asked to report the verbal feedback they receive from participants and audience members. We expect to hear whether the audience found the content engaging and inspiring, whether they enjoyed singing along with the carols, and whether they found the addition of brass ensemble, percussion and organ to be a draw to the concert in addition to the sing-alongs, choirs, and narrations. GRC and Cantabile performers will be asked for feedback about their personal artistic growth and the merit of the experience through an electronic questionnaire. All of the directors involved will be interviewed concerning the effectiveness of the collaboration and the artistic and technical growth of their choirs. All of the above measures will be combined into a concert success summary that will be discussed with the artistic director and the board of directors as part of the planning for our next collaborative event. Quantitative evaluations will be based on feedback from survey participants. We have implemented a ticket coding system that allows us to accurately record and divide our attendees into Adult, Senior, Student/Child or Comp tickets. We will use this to gauge our audience, and compare this to last year’s attendance. We anticipate a shuffle of our traditional audience make-up due to the following factors: The concert will be performed ONE DAY ONLY (traditionally 2 days), in a new location, and without our traditional collaborative partner (Youth Chorale of Central Minnesota, who will produce their own holiday concert this year). In addition, we are enjoying recent broad community exposure through Classical MPR’s Regional Spotlight, where our recordings were selected four times this past year for airplay. We are also arming our board and membership with the tools they need to go out and sell ad space in our concert program, get concert sponsorships, and sell tickets in advance of the performance. We anticipate that this increase in exposure around the community and our proactive approach to increasing community interest in our group will build a large audience for this concert regardless of the change of location, number of performances, and collaborative partner. We expect a minimum of 350 but hope to far surpass that number. The audience survey questions will ask for specific feedback regarding the new elements of the concert production and our publicity efforts. Great River Chorale members will be asked for specific feedback regarding their participation in publicity and ad sales for the performance in addition to questions about the format and artistic merit.