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OUR STORY

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OUR MISSION

Camerata Baltimore is formed to promote the choral arts to the public through performance, education, and public outreach, with an emphasis on promoting the same to and for people of color as an underserved community in the choral arts.

HISTORY OF 

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Founded in 2014, by artistic director James Mayo III, Camerata Baltimore has grown from a small passion project into one of Baltimore’s must-watch ensembles with a stable of talented members and a devoted following. 

 

Camerata Baltimore’s inaugural concert took place on December 5th, 2014 at Catonsville Baptist Church in Catonsville, MD. The program included selections from Handel’s Messiah - along with other familiar Christmas favorites. This concert has since become an annual tradition, ringing in the holidays and warming hearts each December. 

 

Since 2016 the ensemble has taken a yearly tour of the east coast United States culminating in a concert at Northfield Mount Hermon School in Mount Hermon, MA to celebrate the legacy of and memorialize the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

 

In April 2018, Camerata Baltimore premiered Jubilee, a cantata composed by Dr. Charles Garner, professor emeritus of Southern Connecticut State University. The ensemble also premiered his arrangement of the spiritual Deep River

 

In August 2020 amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, Camerata Baltimore became one of the first choirs in the region to return to in-person singing. Following strict health and safety protocols the ensemble was able to safely rehearse and perform at multiple engagements including a joint concert with DC String Workshop streamed live in December of that year. 

OUR STANCE AGAINST THE INJUSTICE TOWARDS THE BLACK COMMUNITY

The Board of Directors, Artistic Director, and the choral members of Camerata Baltimore stand vehemently against the racial and social injustices against people of color - in particular, black people.

For centuries, black people have been marginalized, traumatized, ridiculed, beaten, bludgeoned, hurt, killed, shot, lynched, and even crucified to gain equality and equity for their families, businesses, creeds/faiths, and gender/sexuality expressions and orientations.

We stand, in solidarity and support, for the peaceful and lawful protests and rallies against such hatred, bigotry, and malice towards the black community.

It is our continued prayer and hope that discussions are had as a catalyst to reform, ratify, change, and implement laws and mandates that will alter the trajectory of black lives and people of color being slain and assassinated.

#BlackLivesMatter.

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