Empowering Voices: Chorus for Rikers Island

The New York City Community Chorus is thrilled to be launching its brand new Chorus for incarcerated people at Rikers Island. This new Chorus would be made up entirely of incarcerated individuals and will rehearse and perform within the grounds of the facility.

Our mission with this new Chorus remains the same: to restore the joy of singing to the day-to-day lives of New Yorkers – and now, with the help of the Department of Correction, we can’t wait to be able to bring the joy of singing to the incarcerated individuals at Rikers Island.

Since 1994, our organization has been committed to providing robust musical education and Choral experiences to our community. We believe that regardless of one’s background, we should all be able to come together and celebrate our humanity through music. We are a non-audition, non-tuition Chorus that has remained funded by our community since the beginning.

But now, we need your help to make an impact. We want this to be a robust Choral program that brings joy to our neighbors at Rikers Island.

Our intended program is a 12-week season with one weekly 2-hour rehearsal with the incarcerated individuals. We need funding to help compensate our artistic personnel that will run this program, as well as to pay for music licensing and printing.

The total cost of this program is $10,000.

Everything is set up with the administrators at the prison. We really just need your help lifting it off the ground.

Donations of any size will help us define what it means to bring joy to our whole community. Please spread the word of our upcoming program with your friends, and feel free to share our campaign on your social media platforms.

Information for other ways to donate can be found on our website: nycccha.org/donate.