Cantabile Choral Guild and You

by Sonja Wohlgemuth, Executive Director

Last year marked Baroque Choral Guild’s 25th season and the 10th for Cantabile Children’s Chorus. Now Cantabile Choral Guild begins another quarter century under a new name, and we are full of enthusiasm to build upon our past successes and reach new heights in pursuit of our mission of Music for Life, music that enriches our lives, music that reaches young and old, music that brings us together as one.

We boast a long history of artistic growth supported by careful planning and prudent budgeting. Our greatest challenge now is to sustain this stability and growth during the transitional period after the major artistic, organizational, and administrative changes we have just made. It is so exciting!

You attend our concerts, enroll your children in our programs, sing in our choirs, volunteer your time, donate generously, and tell your friends about us, and we could never think of you as patrons. Our relationship is richer than that. We are friends. We are family. We are partners in our commitment to excellence. We all acknowledge how important the arts are in our lives. We share the beauty of music. And together we carry out the mission of Music for Life.

Like a good friend, you support us, you challenge us, you encourage us, and you take chances with us. You trust our choices and believe in our goals. You celebrate our achievements and stand by us in times of need. I cannot thank you enough!

Cantabile’s future promises to build on our past successes and impeccable reputation, and we want our friends with us. We are embarking on a Campaign for the Next Quarter Century to raise funds for a variety of important goals.

Economically, we seek to balance our revenue sources, replenish our reserves, and increase our endowment. To handle the growth in our operations, we are recruiting volunteers and also working to expand our paid administrative and artistic staff with compensation that attracts and retains people committed to promoting the arts. Besides continuing the excellence of our educational and performance programs, a major artistic goal is to reach out in collaboration with other organizations and also on our own to a larger community, to a wider geographic and socio-economic constituency, to music lovers of all ages.

As part of our Campaign for the Next Quarter Century, we have set fundraising goals for the next three years: $50,000 in year one, $75,000 in year two, and $100,000 in year three. These goals are ambitious, but based on our experience last year, I know we can meet them with your help. In the 20032004 season, when we set out to raise $35,000 in individual contributions, it was you who helped us to achieve that goal and exceed it by raising $45,000! This support from all of you was the main reason why a projected $20,000 deficit for that big celebratory anniversary season shrank so much that we actually dipped into our reserves for less than $1,000.

We hope the support from you that is essential for our continued growth has been earned with our long history of artistic excellence and organizational stability. I am so proud of Cantabile’s reputation for excellence that I just have to summarize some recent highlights.

Cantabile Chorale has received glowing reviews for Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil in March and received accolades again in May for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. The chorus has also increased audiences by 50% with 10% of them students and is now preparing for a first commercial recording

Cantabile Youth Singers has appointed Elena Sharkova as artistic director and hired more teaching staff and an additional program manager. They have increased enrollment by 20%, have established a partnership with Opera San José, and are preparing for a Carnegie Hall debut at a youth choir festival led by Elena Sharkova

Cantabile needs your support! Your gifts to the general fund are allocated based on the priority of needs within the entire organization, but you may also earmark donations to support the operations of just the Cantabile Chorale or just the Cantabile Youth Singers, and your contributions to the Signe Boyer Scholarship Fund go exclusively to need-based annual scholarships. I ask you to consider a gift that is meaningful for you, a gift for a bright future, a gift for Music for Life.

To all of you in the Cantabile family, I say that I treasure our continued relationship, and I want to thank you for the role you have played in our success and will play in our future, for it is our friends and family who stand beside us in times of joy and in times of need.

In the coming weeks, you will receive a letter reiterating this appeal to support our goals. I dearly hope that you will continue or increase your current support or join our growing list of cherished donors. Once again, thank you!

Cantabile Choral Guild
953 Industrial Avenue, Suite 122, Palo Alto CA 94303
650.424.1410 info@cantabile.org