The University Chorus is UGA’s largest mixed choral ensemble and is open to university students as well as faculty, staff, and Athens community members. It is home to upper-level music majors/minors as well as experienced choral singers from throughout the university student body in all years of study.  Due to its once-a-week rehearsal schedule and the challenge of its repertoire, the ensemble is geared toward experienced singers with strong music-reading skills.  

The University Chorus specializes in classical choral and choral/orchestral repertoire and often collaborates with the UGA Hodgson Singers and the University Symphony Orchestra.  The choir is frequently under the leadership of doctoral graduate conducting students, and typically performs 2-3 times each semester.

The University Chorus welcomes new members at the beginning of each semester. See above for information about joining.

The past three decades have seen marked growth for professional choral singing in the United States. In the early 1990s, there were only a few truly professional choirs doing regular work in the U.S., most of which rehearsed on a weekly model using the same mostly-local roster all season long. Today, many companies rehearse on a “project” model, where singers from all over the country are engaged for singular projects, travel to a city, rehearse intensely for a few days before the concert, perform, and then scatter again. The UGA Choral Project seeks to imitate this project model, and provide our students with a near-professional experience during their study at UGA.

Each semester, Choral Project will build its roster alongside an intensive rehearsal schedule, usually spanning no more than two weeks. Because of its project-based structure, size and membership vary each semester. It should appeal to those seeking a high-level choral experience within a compressed time frame.

The international award-winning Hodgson Singers is UGA’s premiere choral ensemble made up of many of the university’s most talented and dedicated singers.  Students are eligible for membership in Hodgson Singers only after participating in one of the other UGA choral ensembles for at least one semester and passing a thorough audition process.  

In 2014, the UGA Hodgson Singers won the prestigious International Choral Competition Ave Verum in Baden, Austria. The choir took "Grand Prix Ave Verum," the competition's top prize, out of 10 selected choirs from the US, Italy, Hungary, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Austria, and the Philippines.  Judges were from Austria, Finland, Germany, Spain, and the US.

The Hodgson Singers is primarily made up of advanced undergraduate and graduate student singers.  Because of its more rigorous schedule of rehearsals and performances both on and off-campus throughout the year, this ensemble requires students to make a full-year commitment. The Hodgson Singers perform under the direction of Dr. Daniel Bara.

In addition to expressing your interest in a choir via the UGA Choirs website, students should sign-up for a brief placement hearing.

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Join us for a FREE event celebrating the mission of Chamber Music Athens: bringing together guest artists, UGA faculty and students, and the Athens community for intense and inspiring musical collaboration. Distinguished guest artists, Emily Daggett Smith, violin and William Ransom, piano, join UGA faculty and students in Max Bruch’s gorgeous and brilliant String Octet, Johannes Brahms’s profound Clarinet Trio, and Claude Debussy’s joyous Little Suite.

DICKIE LEE 
Assistant Professor of Music Theory

April 22, 2023: Presented his paper “Intertextual Rhetoric in Recent Popular Music” at the New England Conference of Music Theorists, a regional music theory society meeting that occurred this year at Yale’s School of Music.

Join us this upcoming Tuesday for our Spring 2023 Tuba Euphonium Ensemble Concert! The ensemble is directed by Dr. Matthew Shipes, Assistant Professor of Tuba and Euphonium, and will feature works by W.A. Mozart, Franz Biebl, Jean Sibelius, Ben Miles, Paul Holmes and Kenyon Wilson. We hope to see you there!