Diablo Women's Chorale
Mission Statement
The mission of the Diablo Women's Chorale is to share our joy and love of music
with our community and members through study, practice and performance.
We strive to be educational, entertaining, inspirational and seek
to build fellowship on a foundation of dignity and respect.
About the Chorale
The Diablo Women's Chorale, founded in 1942, is a diverse group of women singers from all areas of Contra Costa County in California. Membership, which has ranged from 14 to 40 through the years, is currently at 28; new members are welcomed in September and January each year. Rehearsals are from 7 to 9 p.m. Mondays in Walnut Creek. For more information about joining us, click here:
Our main concerts are presented in December and May. The Chorale also performs at community and private events in the area. Please contact us if you would like information about performing at your event. Recent repertoire has included the music of Tchaikovsky, Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, Gershwin, Sondheim, and James Taylor. American styles of music are emphasized, including jazz, folk, country, blues, spirituals, gospel, Broadway and pop.
Meet the Chorale
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Meet Our Director
Mary Sorenson studied voice, piano, music history and music theory at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. She studied piano at the Wisconsin College Conservatory of Music and vocal and keyboard jazz with Nancy Fraser in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from which she hails. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1979, and earned a multiple subject teaching credential in California in 1988, teaching vocal music.
For the past 22 years Mary has taught music in the East Bay in the Mt. Diablo School District and at her private studio. She founded the Pleasant Hill Elementary School Chorus as well as the Pleasant Hill Middle School Chorus, and has been a proud member of Diablo Women's Chorale since 1999, leading the alto section since 2001. Mary is excited to begin her fifth season directing the Chorale.
Meet Our Officers
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| Sonja Wilkin President |
Barbara Burkhardt Past-President & Parliamentarian |
Joan Weinstein Vice-President |
Suzanne Salter Treasurer |
Leslie Holst Secretary |
Meet Our Accompanist
Stephen Evans holds music degrees from the University of Texas, Austin, in Cello Performance and the University of London, Goldsmiths College in Orchestral Performance. He has performed in orchestras in Texas, Europe, and the Bay Area, and has also performed piano recitals in Texas and San Francisco. He has taught piano and cello at Civic Arts Education in Walnut Creek since 1999 and he currently performs with a wide variety of ensembles in the Bay Area.
About Our Logo
The Chorale membership decided in 2012 that we needed a new logo. The one we had been using for many years felt dated and we wanted a new look. So we held a logo design contest soliciting entries from our members. The winning entry was designed and submitted by Carol Hansen Grey.
Along with Carol's submission she wrote the following about her design:
"I used a photograph of Mt. Diablo to trace the top ridges to come up with the design, so the shape of the hills in the logo is the actual shape of Mt. Diablo and the color represents the "golden hills" of California. I positioned the colorful rays to represent the sunrise over the golden hills (I always find it helpful to understand the designer's conception of why the colors and shapes were used :). As an aside: All the while I was designing it the Sound of Music kept running through my head (i.e., "The hills are alive with the sound of music").