Team: Alan Brown, John Shibley
Chorus America, the national service organization for the choral music field, has drawn on WolfBrown’s resources several times in connection with its sector-building efforts. With support from a consortium of funders, Chorus America commissioned WolfBrown to conduct a national study of audiences for choral music, resulting in the report Assessing the Audience Impact of Choral Music Concerts.
Chorus America again turned to WolfBrown to facilitate a high-level conversation with leaders in the choral music field to explore and consider the complex web of interconnections between individuals and organizations that, taken together, constitute the field as we know it. Alan Brown, working collaboratively with John Shibley, designed and facilitated a forum “Exploring the Choral Ecosystem” with 28 leaders drawn from the choral field at Yale University in 2016 (convened by Chorus America in partnership with American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), Barbershop Harmony Society (BHS), and Yale University School of Music, with funding support from the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation).
The goals of the forum were to: 1) increase the collective understanding of the ways that different types of choral music artists, audiences, and patrons nurture one another, 2) identify potential strengths and potential weaknesses in this system, as well as underutilized resources, and 3) inform the strategic thinking of all participants.
Additionally, Alan Brown has spoken at several Chorus America conferences, most recently in 2022 on the topic of immersive experiences.