Royal Ensembles

Music ensembles at Queens are open to all members of the Queens community. Not only do our ensembles perform concerts on campus, but they also make music in the community and around the world. No matter your major or experience level, there is an ensemble for you!

Queens Choral Union (MUS 196)

All are welcome without audition to this mixed choir, including Queens students, faculty, staff, and members of the Charlotte community. You will sing various musical styles in Choral Union, including masterworks with orchestra and music from various world music traditions. Recently, the Choral Union performed the Credo by Margaret Bonds as part of the Margaret Bonds Symposium on campus. They also worked with internationally renowned composer Dan Forrest and comprised the onstage chorus for productions of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe and HMS Pinafore, all in the beautiful Sarah Belk Gambrell Center for the Arts on Queens campus.

• Rehearsals: Tuesdays, 7:30-9:30 p.m.
• Contact: Dr. Justin Smith, Director of Choral Activities (smithj11@queens.edu)

Royal Voices of Charlotte (MUS 197)

Queens’s select chamber ensemble performs at the university, community, national, and international levels. Admission is by audition only, which takes place the week prior to each semester and can be scheduled by contacting the director. Royal Voices’ repertoire includes secular and sacred choral works designed for smaller chamber groups from the fifteenth through the twenty-first centuries. In recent years, Royal Voices has toured internationally, winning first prize at both the International Choral Kathaumixw in Canada and the International Choral Festival of Preveza in Greece. They also performed with Sarah Brightman at the Blumenthal Theatre in Charlotte, Bach Akademie Charlotte, and the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, and were one of eight choirs nationwide selected to perform at the National Collegiate Choral Organization’s National Conference in Atlanta.

• Rehearsals: Thursdays, 7:00-9:30 p.m.
• Contact: Dr. Justin Smith, Director of Choral Activities (smithj11@queens.edu)

Guitar Ensemble (MUS 193)

This non-auditioned group of guitarists presents music from multiple styles. Guitarists of all levels are welcome, and there are opportunities for non-reading guitarists, vocalists, and other instrumentalists. Membership is primarily Queens students, but faculty, staff, and community members are welcome.

• Rehearsals: Wednesdays, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
• Contact: Bob Teixeira (teixeirar@queens.edu)

Queens Chamber Orchestra (MUS 179)

The Queens Chamber Orchestra (QCO) brings together Queens students with other students, community, and professional artists to perform orchestral classics in the Western classical tradition while promoting diverse cultures’ works. We work together on an array of orchestral skills including precise ensemble playing; sight reading; left and bow hand techniques and expectations of dynamics, articulation, and phrasing based on the era of each piece being performed. We perform at a remarkably high artistic level and have a great time achieving that! QCO is open to all Queens students and community members accepted through a placement audition with the director before the add/drop deadline each semester.

• Rehearsals: Mondays, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
• Contact: Peter deVries (devriesp@queens.edu)