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For a living, growing, vibrant institution, a significant anniversary represents an occasion to not only celebrate the past, but also consider the present and future. For its 120th Anniversary Concert the TMC paid tribute to its heritage of excellence with a stunning classical concert, TMC Conductor Trading Cards, and a party with cake for all. But we didn’t just look backwards: our live webcast of this concert, and a pre-concert fund-raising reception demonstrated the TMC’s commitment to a legacy of changing lives through beautiful choral music.

Administrative and Box Office Manager Kimber Jonah assembled all of the logos the TMC has used over its history. Can you match the logo to the year it was introduced?

If you were at the TMC’s opening Mozart and Haydn concert, you received a bright orange card in the concert program asking you to complete an online survey about your concert experience. This survey is part of a two-year 21-choir intrinsic impact research project being conducted by Chorus America and managed by the respected arts research firm WolfBrown. The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir is the only Canadian choir participating in this North-America-wide project.

The critics who review our concerts and audience members who take the time to tell us how they liked us are often “classical music people”: experienced aficionados of Classical music, who know what to expect from a concert. We love these people, and cherish them, and we feel that we have a pretty good idea of how to make concerts an enjoyable experience for them. Attracting new audience members presents a challenge for any classical music ensemble, but especially for an ensemble whose performances typically run only one evening.

It’s not difficult to understand why even longstanding and tremendously accomplished choirs like the TMC occasionally worry about how to appeal to new generations of patrons; classical music is pigeonholed in the culture as a niche pursuit with an aged, lily-white target audience. But the labels are largely unfair, and with performances this inspired and beautifully put together, it’s hard not to have hope for the future.

Concert Patrons Provide Valuable Feedback by Anne Longmore, Director of Marketing In December, we reported on the first set of results from our Chorus America Intrinsic Impact Survey. Now that we are one quarter of the way through the data-collection for this eight-concert research project, we are working hard to compile and evaluate our results...