Alongside our talented choristers and dedicated staff, our extensive music library is one of the San Diego Children’s Choir’s greatest assets. Since the Choir’s founding in 1990, we have accumulated more than 640 titles of sheet music for use with our choir program. With an average number of copies at 30 per title (or, one inch thick of music), we’ve assessed that our current library is over 66 feet wide! Having the space, physical infrastructure, and system to accommodate such a collection is necessary to keep this resource well-organized and accessible.
Thanks to a major grant from the Art Pratt Foundation of Old Mission Rotary, the dream to replace our once partially dilapidated, space-inefficient, and inaccessible music filing system with a robust new music filing system has become a reality! A brand new, bespoke system was delivered and installed in our new office in late December. Last week, SDCC’s Artistic Director Ruthie Millgard had the pleasure of sharing the results of the Art Pratt Foundation’s generous support to President Lee Kaminetz (see photo above).
Our music library contains repertoire from a diverse range of music styles from many periods in history, cultures, and languages. This resource enables our artistic team to select appropriate pieces suitable to specific age groups and skill levels, and for them to create engaging and dynamic performances that showcase the talents and ignites the curiosity of the young singers. Each year, SDCC purchases an average of 12-15 titles for choristers to study, perform, and catalog for future re-use. Our collection grows by about a foot per year!
With our new system our artistic team and volunteers can quickly find and prepare the songs they need, saving valuable time. This new system also helps in maintaining the integrity of the choir's repertoire by ensuring that all music scores are properly cataloged and stored. This prevents loss or damage to important musical pieces and facilitates effective inventory management.
SDCC’s music filing systems, before and after
Once the system was installed, monumental effort was needed to label and file away hundreds of titles of sheet music contained in dozens of clerical boxes. We drew on our robust Ensemble Program parent volunteers to help with the endeavor. Over the course of a month, in 60+ hours with the focus and attention of over 23 volunteers, our music library is now fully functional. We want to thank the following volunteers for their dedication and time:
Hadley Ajana
Alicia Appel
Wanda Appolon
Lisa Bagchi and Family
Sara Bhatt
Sirada Brown
Jennie Degraffenreid
Matt Giebel
Vaychan Hallman
Katherine Kelly
Diana Lee
Michael Miklos
Heidi Na
Lia Ortega
Julie Reynolds and Family
Reyes Rochelle
Madhavi Sreedevikutty
Nicole Uyboco and Family
Aki Wakabayashi
Li Xu
Jessica Lissa Zan
Lin Lin Zheng
Xinghua Zhu
Volunteers sort, label, and file music into the new library system
Now that our music library is “easy-to-use,” it can finally be the community resource we’ve envisioned it to be, where other local children’s choirs and educational institutions can sort through and borrow from it for their own students and communities. Our sincere thanks, again, the Art Pratt Foundation of Old Mission Rotary and parent volunteers.
If you have any interest in helping fund additional music titles, donations are always welcome by visiting our website at www.sdcchoir.org/support-us.