Salem Youth Chorus provides musical opportunity for youth

Staff report

SALEM

Salem Youth Chorus was founded in 2007 to provide teens and collegiate young adults in the greater Salem and Youngstown area with the opportunity to sing great choral music as crafted by the compositional masters. The music program attracts young people from communities throughout the Valley.

Membership in the chorus is open to all interested and qualified teens and college- age young adults. Visit Salem Youth Chorus on Facebook for more information, pictures and news of upcoming concerts and events.

In addition to our local concerts, the ensemble tours every summer. SYC was the guest choir in 2010-2015 for the annual Boar’s Head and Yule Log Festival at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Youngstown. The ensemble was a prize winner in the 2010 national music competition, The American Prize. In August of 2010, the SYC traveled to cathedrals in England, Ireland and Wales for concerts and Choral Evensong. In 2012, the SYC sang at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans and Trinity Episcopal in Baton Rouge. The next year took the SYC to cathedrals in North Carolina, West Virginia and a return performance to Williamsburg. The 2014 tour took the ensemble to Nassau, Bahamas, for a concert and liturgies at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral. The SYC has sung in Opera Western Reserve’s productions of “Tosca” and “The Barber of Seville.”

The SYC has recorded four CDs: “Morning Has Broken,” “Evening Reflections,” “A Festival of Lessons and Carols” and “Sing a New Song.”

Jon Simsic is artistic director of the chorus and organist/choir master at St. Joseph’s Church in Canton. He was artistic director of Youth Music and Theater for the Salem Community Theatre from 2005-2010. From 1991-2000, Simsic was assistant conductor and chorus master of Youngstown Symphony.

He also is a composer, and his setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis for treble voices and organ will soon be released by Paraclete Press. His anthem “Harvest Hymn” for chorus and organ was the 2008 grand-prize winner for the Royal School of Church Music Choral Competition.

SYC has 501(c)(3) nonprofit status as a charitable arts organization.