History

Our choir's history begins at the Mountain View Community School of Music and Art, where there was a program called the Peninsula Childrens Chorale. While a part of the Community School, the choir grew, excelled, and participated in a variety of unique performance opportunities, including the premiere of Libby Larsen's "Missa Gaia" with Schola Cantorum. In 1994, founding Artistic Director Signe Boyer left the Community School to create Cantabile Youth Singers. Though we were still under sponsorship - now of the adult choir Baroque Choral Guild (now the Bay Choral Guild) - Cantabile was on its way.

The program began with three levels (Preparatory, Intermediate and Concert), 25 singers (who rehearsed at the same Foothill Congregational Church where our rehearsals still take place), a group of fabulously dedicated parents and families, a thoroughly committed Artistic Director, and big dreams. And those big dreams came true.

In 1996, Cantabile began its touring program, as well as continued its history of collaboration with other Bay Area arts organizations. The summer of 1996 saw the choir in Disneyland at their first festival and in the fall they premiered "Requiem for Lost Children" by Los Altos composer Sondra Clark and commissioned by the San Jose Symphonic Choir and Orchestra. 1997 also saw two landmark performances: Cantabile sang the "Saint Matthew Passion" with the internationally recognized Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, as well as performed in Henry Mollicone's "A Rat's Tale: The Pied Piper Revisited."

The summer of 1998 added even more to the choir's rich performance record - Cantabile participated in a choir exchange with England's Farnham Youth Choir and performed in such world-renowed performance venues as Bath Cathedral. Two years later, they were back in Europe, participating in the Tuscany International Children's Choir Festival under conductor Henry Leck and performing in a huge showcase concert in Florence.

After presenting a workshop at the prestigious California Music Educators' Association Conference (2002), premiering Craig Bohmler's beautiful piece "Sisters", a work about sister cities for children's choir, adult choir, and symphony orchestra, with Mission Chamber Orchestra (2003), and yet another spectacular European tour, this time to Salsburg, Vienna, and Budapest (during which they performed both with and for the internationally recognized Vienna Boys Choir) (2004), Signe Boyer stepped down as Artistic Director.

That fall saw the beginning of Cantabile's first season with current Artistic Director Elena Sharkova, who has continued to build the artistic excellence and reputation of Cantabile. In 2005, she led the choir to its debut at Carnegie Hall during the National Children's Choir Festival.

2007/08 saw one of the most significant organizational milestones in Cantabile's history - this was the year in which Cantabile became an independent corporation focused entirely on youth programs. This allowed Cantabile to concentrate all of its energies, monies, time, and people on building the fabulous children's music program it has become! And our first independent season was a smashing success - it saw record donations, renewed excitement, and a extraordinary Baltic Tour to Finland, Estonia, and Russia during which Cantabile performed at the Tallinn SongFest alongside 25,000 other international youth singers and sang at Helsinki's world-famous Church of the Rock, among other spectacular performances and experiences.

This season, Cantabile expanded its repertoire further - our choirs performed with actor Ryan Gossling in his rock play "Dead Man's Bones" and sang on a rock CD recording with a local San Francisco band. Like all history, ours is still being written - summer of 2010 will see Cantabile's choirs once again onstage at Carnegie Hall during the National Children's Choir Festival and, next season, our singers with perform alongside the world-famous Kronos Quartet as part of a concert at Stanford Lively Arts. We can't wait to see what is next!