Reviews

Emily, the Children's Choir sounded just wonderful on Saturday night. I can't tell you how many people have mentioned to me how good they sounded, and they looked so professional. Thanks to you and to them for your superb contribution to the Gathering on the Green program.

Andrews Sill, Conductor, Gathering on the Green Orchestra (July 16, 2007)

I wanted to write and thank you and the MILWAUKEE'S CHILDREN'S CHOIR. Our WKLH CHRISTMAS SHOW at the Riverside Theater would not have been as successful without your participation. The Choir's professionalism and the program tailored to our needs was so much more than I expected when I made the call. Thanks for providing our community with talented, committed kids from all neighborhoods and all backgrounds who show us what hard work can produce. Talent, Diversity, Commitment, this is the mantra Milwaukee Children's Choir can be proud to chant. It was such a pleasure to work with you. I promise this will happen again. Please keep in touch.

John McGivern, Letter (March 14, 2007)

The Milwaukee Children's Choir was the star of [Present Music's Thanksgiving] concert, confident and expressive in two difficult and lengthy premieres for children's voices and chamber orchestra.

Rick Walters, Shepard Express (November 23-29, 2006)

The Milwaukee Children's Choir has grown in size, reach and prestige each of the 12 years since Emily Crocker founded the organization. The group has become the children's choir of choice of the Milwaukee Symphony, Present Music and other major performing arts organizations.

Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (July 5, 2006)

Those young voices, floating through the cathedral like innocence made sonic, were the best possible musical start to the holiday season.

Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (November 2005)

[E]xpert execution by the orchestra, the chorus, the Milwaukee Children’s Choir and a great trio of soloists demonstrated the depth of Carmina Burana’s reach into the human tragedy

Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (November 2005)

All the elements, in surround sound... Wind premiere fills cathedral to great effect ... You don’t so much listen to Henry Brant’s Wind, Water, Clouds and Fire, premiered Friday by Present Music, as live within it. It does not build to climaxes or even go anywhere in particular. It’s just all around you, a high-pitched, ringing music of the spheres. Listening to this music is like looking up at a clear night sky. It’s not chaotic—if you pay a little attention, you get to know the constellations.....One of the loveliest effects was the lifeline of sound that stretched from apse to loft in the exchanges and unisons between the children’s choir and Don Sipes’ piccolo trumpet. ....The premiere took up most of the second half. In the first half, ... [t]he children’s choir sang Shall We Gather at the River with a sweet sincerity that would make a believer of anyone. Alice Parker’s Invocation Peace, after an Omaha Indian song, drew lovely antiphonal singing from all the choirs and readied our ears for Brant’s spatial riot to come.

Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (November 2004)

The Milwaukee Children’s Chorus made an irresistible band of fairies. [From a review of a staged version of Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the MSO, Andreas Delfs conducting, John DeLancie producer/director.]

Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (September 2004)

At Pops, a merry little Christmas... Uihlein Hall sounded a lot like Christmas on Friday evening as the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Pops series presented an evening of holiday music under the baton of the orchestra’s principal pops conductor, Doc Severinsen... Lee Erickson, director of the Symphony Chorus, and Emily Holt Crocker, director of the Children’s Choir, each took a turn at the podium to conduct their respective ensembles in polished, neatly executed performances.

Elaine Schmidt, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (December 2003)

The simple magic of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel took the Uihlein Hall stage Friday evening in a performance by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and guests, under the baton of music director Andreas Delfs... The Milwaukee Children’s Choir and Women of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus added a rich texture to the performance.

Elaine Schmidt, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (November 2003)

Present Music offers buffet of sounds... The Milwaukee Children’s Choir was there, too. The youngest singers looked adorable and sounded wonderful in Robert Revicki’s Alleluia, its Latin text set to a surprising and nifty Jewish hora dance rhythm. The older ones did remarkably well with the free rhythms and slip-sliding pitches of R. Murray Schafer’s Epitaph for Moonlight and had infectious fun with the Afro-Latin rhythm of Stephen Hatfield’s Jabula Jesu. Both the older and younger choirs sang works by 17-year-old Charlie Asch, who took a bow and enjoyed the applause of the big audience at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist.

Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (November 2003)

The voices were expressive and well-rehearsed, the phrasing interesting and satisfying. Balance between the parts was particularly impressive.

Rick Walters, The Shepherd Express (December 2002)

The children form a disciplined ensemble, singing with a pure ringing sound that is both sweet and powerful. Crocker led the combined ensembles in a well-crafted, colorful performance that included mature music-making from the young singers.

Elaine Schmidt, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (December 2002)

The Milwaukee Children’s Choir scored a great success on March 16, in the unlikely environment of a Present Music concert at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The 80-voice Cantorei unit of the MCC took to the Finnish language and the spare idiom of Aulis Sallinen as if born to them. The young singers filled Windhover Hall with sound that astonished with its precision, impressed with its substance and charmed with its innocence.

Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (March 2002)

The Milwaukee Children’s Choir is the most professional children’s choir I have ever worked with. Their mastery of the music’s technical requirements is a given fact. The notes are always there, and whether they are singing in English, Latin, French or another language, the diction is flawless. And such spirit, confidence, intensity, passion—you not only hear it in their voices but you also see it shining on their faces. Working with the Milwaukee Children’s Choir is a joy.

Andreas Delfs, MSO Music Director (December 2001)

These are disciplined young singers. They possess the clarity of sound that one expects from such a young ensemble along with the musical expressiveness of a more mature, experienced group of performers. Saturday afternoon’s solo vocalists, drawn from the choir, were sopranos Jamie Yu and Charlie Asch and alto Leigh Akin. They sang with confidence, clarity and expression.

Elaine Schmidt, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (December 2001)

The sound of the Milwaukee Children’s Choir is substantial. Its pitch is good, and its rhythm is excellent. The 70 young singers are attentive and responsive. Director Emily Crocker has trained them well. But the best thing about this choir is that it still sounds like kids singing. They have not a trace of affectation; they don’t force smiles, they don’t ladle on expression, they don’t mimic the English boychoir style. They are who they are. When they sang “The First Nowell” [from Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Christmas oratorio] at Thursday’s Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra concert, so ingenuously, so simply, it was as if Christmas had come early.

Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (December 1998)