New Website Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SAN FRANCISCO GIRLS CHORUS LAUNCHES NEW WEBSITE TO BETTER SERVE AUDIENCES AND PUBLIC

Three-time Grammy® Award-winning San Francisco Girls Chorus has launched a new, updated website to better serve audiences, the public, media and its members and families. The new site may be viewed at www.sfgirlschorus.org.

The new website, designed by New York-based Patron Technology, features historical information about the 29-year-old, award-winning and internationally acclaimed chorus, its performance and education programs, chorus school, calendar of events, sound and video clips, photos and more. Patron Technology is a leader in electronic marketing of arts and cultural organizations whose client list includes the New York Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, American Folk Art Museum, Huntington Library and Collections, Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum (UK), Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Paul Taylor Dance Company and dozens of others.

The San Francisco Girls Chorus 2007-2008 season begins Friday, October 26, at 8 p.m. at Calvary Presbyterian Church in San Francisco with “Music Fit for a Queen,” a program featuring English choral masterworks written for or about women royalty. The English Monarchy has been steeped in musical tradition for more than a thousand years, and musical training and performance was an integral part of every queen’s education and culture. Voices, organ, bells, harp and piano complement the Girls Chorus on a musical trip through time and sound from the heavenly tones of James MacMillan’s Te Deum and Britten’s Missa Brevis to the lighter side of royalty with Gilbert and Sullivan and settings of folksongs by Michael Neaum. A crowning highlight of the evening will be John Tavener’s stunningly beautiful “Glory to God for This Transient Life”, a piece built in the Eastern Orthodox tradition.

About the San Francisco Girls Chorus

Founded in 1978, the San Francisco Girls Chorus is an internationally acclaimed center for choral music performances and education for girls and young women ages 7-18. More than 300 singers from 160 schools in 48 Bay Area cities participate in what the California Arts Council calls “a model in the country for training girls’ voices”.

The organization comprises five choruses: Chorissima, the concert, recording, and touring ensembles, conducted by Artistic Director Susan McMane; and the four-level Chorus School training program, supervised by Director Elizabeth Avakian.

Each year, the dedicated young artists present season concerts, tour nationally or internationally, and appear with respected sponsoring organizations, such as the San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Opera. Their most recent international tour was in July 2007 when the ensemble represented the United States in the prestigious World Vision Children’s Choir Festival in Seoul, Korea, and in the Gateway to Music Festival at the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing. In August 2005, Chorissima was invited to perform at the 7th World Symposium on Choral Music in Kyoto and also at the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan.

Known as a leader in its field, the San Francisco Girls Chorus was honored in 2001 as the first youth chorus to win the prestigious “Margaret Hillis Award” given annually by Chorus America to a chorus that demonstrates artistic excellence, a strong organizational structure, and a commitment to education. Other awards include two ASCAP awards for Adventurous Programming in 2001 and 2004.

The San Francisco Girls Chorus has produced six solo CD recordings including: Voices of Hope and Peace, a recording that includes “Anne Frank: A Living Voice” by an American composer Linda Tutas Haugen; Christmas, a selection of diverse holiday songs; Crossroads, a collection of world folk music; and Music from the Venetian Ospedali, a disc of Italian Baroque music, for which The New Yorker proclaimed the Chorus “tremendously accomplished.” The San Francisco Girls Chorus can also be heard on several San Francisco Symphony recordings, including three that earned Grammy® Awards.

For information about the San Francisco Girls Chorus and its 2007-2008 29th anniversary season, visit the new website at www.sfgirlschorus.org or call (415) 863-1752.