The Choir Today
The Manly Warringah Choir comprises a diverse group of people. Some members have been in choirs all their adult lives, have powerful voices and can read music at sight. Others have taken up singing later in life, and are still developing musical and vocal skills. Yet others sing by ear, memorising music and text by heart.
Whatever our individual ability and experience, the one thing we all share is a love of choral music, and of performing it for local audiences.
Choir membership in 2024 numbers around 80.
The Choir’s Conductor since 2003, Dr Carlos Alvarado, is an experienced and accomplished musician, having been trained at The Tchaikovsky Conservertory in Moscow and in Berlin. His particular expertise is in melding the singing of such a variety of voices and abilities to make memorable performances.
Audience members and critics have commented that the quality of singing belies the Choir’s amateur, non-auditioned status.
The Choir is accompanied by an Orchestra formed of local professional musicians, many of whom play in other orchestras such as the Sydney Symphony, the Australian Opera and Ballet, the Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic and the Willoughby Symphony.
Vocal soloists are typically young professionals at the start of their careers who are in the final years of study at the Sydney Conservatorium. Many have gone on to further prestigious training and performance roles locally and overseas. It is very gratifying for Choir members to have performed with rising stars such as Emma Moore, Briony Dwyer, Anna Yunn, Richard Butler, Michael Honeyman, Pascal Herington, David Greco, and Alexander Knight.
The Choir is managed by a Committee formed currently of nine members.
President: Naomi Roseth Vice President: Judy Williams Secretary: Roger Pratt
Treasurer: Margaret Stanley Librarian: Pamela Lewis
Committee Members: Kerry Foster, Richard Griffiths, Eckhard Kemmerer,
Michael Wille.
A Brief History
The Choir’s beginnings are bound up with the Warringah Symphony Society, which was established in 1975 with the purpose of bringing classical music to the Warringah Shire. It was initially formed as an amateur orchestra, and later the Warringah Symphony Choir was established to jointly perform choral works. When the orchestra disbanded in the 1980s the choir continued performing, funding its own orchestra.
In 1998, the Committee changed the name to the Manly-Warringah Choir and it was incorporated that year.
Since the appointment of Carlos Alvarado as Musical Director in 2003, the Choir has gone from strength to strength, in terms of both numbers and ability. We are now able to perform the more challenging pieces in the choral repertoire, in the knowledge that the quality of performance will be suitably high.