The Los Angeles Children’s Chorus turns 40 this year, with a staggering list of honors and accomplishments to its name.
Those include a Grammy win (along with the LA Phil and Gustavo Dudamel) for a concert choir in 2022, performances in countries around the world, on composer John Williams’ 2017 album, on NBC’s The Tonight Show, on Disney+ with Billie Eilish (an LACC alumna) and features in documentaries, among them the Academy Award-nominated Sing! in 2002.
But the impact on the daily lives of the thousands of young people who’ve been through LACC’s choral music training program is what matters most to artistic director Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, who has headed up the chorus for eight years.
The LACC approach to music education
“The audience experience,” Malvar-Ruiz says, “it's not gonna sound right, but it's secondary to me. I think about [the choristers’] experience. The first thing is to create a sense of community, a sense of belonging, no matter where you come from. ... That alone is transformative.”
There’s also the transformative power of working together to accomplish a common goal and of what happens from being able to join voices with others, which Malvar-Ruiz describes as something “physiological.”
“Just think about, in a sports stadium, when everybody sings their team song, something happens,” Malvar-Ruiz says. “ Or in a temple or in a church, when they sing a hymn or a song, something happens. ... There's some innate urge to join our voices with others. And that is also transformative.”
And the ultimate aim, Malvar-Ruiz explains, is to create a positive, fun environment that sets the best foundation for learning.
“When they come here, if we manage to laugh and to have a great time, to learn something, to create beauty together with other people, then that's my job,” he says. “The byproduct is that the audience will love it. That's why I don't worry about it. But it’s certainly the byproduct of what we do.”
And while LACC does have auditions, they’re not about finding out who’s good enough to join.
“ I really believe, we believe, that everybody can sing,” Malvar-Ruiz says. “It's just they haven't been taught properly. So the auditions are more of a placement process.”
‘Music is everything to me’
The students who make up the choir also point to the power of music to help them express themselves and their emotions. Those in the choir today have been through a lot in recent years, from the pandemic to the fires last January.
Tenth-grader Mila Gustafson, who has been with LACC since 2018, lost her family home in Altadena in the Eaton Fire. When it comes to explaining what music means to her, she says, “Music is everything to me.”
"It's a way of sharing and a way of communicating,” Gustafson explains. “[I can] express all my emotions with it, and I feel like that's very, very important.”
A satellite choir expands access in LA
Established in 2024, the LACC choir at Heart of Los Angeles, a nonprofit in the Koreatown/Westlake area, is part of an effort to increase access to LACC’s programs beyond its base in Pasadena.
Right now, it serves students in grades two through six, but the aim is to expand offerings as the students progress. And there already are glimmers of the transformative effects of choral music on the kids in the LACC@HOLA choir.
Second-grader Hadassa Lopez says she joined the choir two years ago because she wanted to learn to sing.
“At first, I was shy,” Lopez says, “because I was new. But I got used to it.”
You can hear the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus in person at their benefit concert Feb. 22. More information here.
