2016-04-06 17.28.07

The Boys and Girls Choir of Harlem Alumni Ensemble is the last remaining vestige of the legendary cultural institution. They rehearse twice a week in a community center basement in Harlem.

“’Allow music to be the tool that helps you navigate the world,’ that’s what they always told us,” Mike Glover, the manager of the Boys Choir Of Harlem Alumni Ensemble says. “For a kid from the projects, it was a whole new idea of what was possible.”

Glover credits the Boys Choir of Harlem with helping him develop the musical and entrepreneurial skills to make him successful adult. So it was a big deal for Glover when, the organization shut down in 2007, amid molestation allegations and financial trouble. The Choir Academy, which had been attached to the choir for decades, will shut its doors for good this June.

Not knowing what else to do,Glover decided to join the Boys and Girls Choir of Harlem Alumni Ensemble. Originally led by Terrence Wright, the former assistant musical director of the BCH, the alumni ensemble became the living spirit of the defunct choir. Wright helped motivate about 30 former students to stay involved with the BCH community. Many say they would be lost without it. It’s a whole separate family for some.

“If I wasn’t doing this I would probably be ripping and running the streets somewhere,” says Darnell Pittman, a current member of the group. “It taught me how to walk with a certain prestige.”

After Wright’s untimely death in 2010, the group was at a crossroads with no leader, board of directors or financial backing. That was when Wright’s former assistant Tyneshia Hill stepped up, becoming the artistic director, while Glover became the manager. Hill has taken the group in a new direction.

Glover and Hall agree that it is important to find funding to support an extensive performance schedule, and eventually land some high-profile collaborations—a hallmark of the choir of yore.

The alumni choir, which consists of a dozen core members, is now a registered 501©3 with a fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas. While performances are still in high demand around Christmastime, Glover says it is hard to find promoters who will pay to hire the ensemble year-round.

TRANSCRIPT

HILL: You have these kids who come from inner city homes and schools and y’all are singing in different languages–whoa, that’s great. No one ever expected a group of Black kids to sing like that. They could sing classical music and then sing a spiritual, and go into a Broadway tune, A train, Jazz and Blues, and then at the end, end their show with a gospel. That’s what makes us. That’s what’s unique about the Boys Choir of Harlem and Girls Choir of Harlem, and about the Alumni Ensemble–we can do everything.

When you say the Boys and Girls Choir of Harlem Alumni Ensemble, They don’t ever hear Girls or Alumni, they hear Boys Choir of Harlem.

My name is Tyneshia Hill, I’m the artistic director of the Alumni Ensemble. I was a part of the GCH from 199 to 2003. I come from sitting amongst them and being their friend, to being their choir master and ultimately their mom.

(SOPRANO) “You don’t always choose the family you’re born into. But just in life you get to accumulate family and that’s what this group is to me, Because you’re accepted for who you are. Silly, serious, and you’re accepted.”

PITTMAN: “If I wasn’t doing this I’d probably be ripping and running the streets somewhere. It has helped me tremendously. I walk with a certain type pf prestige.”

DOLBERRY: “My name is Antoine Dolberry. I graduated in 2005 from the Choir Academy of Herlems. I felt like for me personally going through the experience of BCH, getting that discipling I needed, learning the importance of being eccelectic when being an artist is very important to me. I love the choir because it gives me a chance to see my family.”

HILL: “The school has slowly been going down hill. It hurt when they took BCH, Inc. out of the building. So once that happened, to us who were a part of that, we already felt like there was no more choir. So to go back to Choir Academy without BCH–it was like going back to an old school that had no program. Because BCH Inc. took care of all of the artistic needs.

What we’ll do when they close is we’ll continue to do what we’re doing now. Keep the door open. The alumni ensemble, I always tell them, is a revolving door. And no matter where you go, you’re always welcome to come back.”

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