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Colorado Mesa University offers several choral ensembles for students who enjoy singing. Membership requirements and performance activities vary in each ensemble.

Check out the choirs on SoundCloud!

Vocal Arts Ensemble

Colorado Mesa University's flagship choral ensemble. This advanced mid-size, mixed-voice ensemble performs significant choral literature of all styles and concertizes frequently throughout the region and on extended tours. Membership is by audition each year.

VAE sings Ohtul

Vocal Chords

CMU's highly select vocal chamber ensemble. This advanced, small, mixed-voice ensemble performs significant choral literature appropriate for a chamber ensemble from all styles and joins the Vocal Arts Ensemble as it concertizes frequently throughout the region and on extended tours. Membership is by audition each year.

Soprano/Alto Choir

This campus-wide chorus is open to all interested student, faculty, and community adults, with consent of the director. Soprano/Alto Choir performs all types of literature written for combined voices, and concertizes with other university choral ensembles and in separate performances on and off campus.

Tenor/Bass Choir

Campus wide chorus open to all interested student, faculty and community adults, with the consent of the director. Tenor/Bass Choir performs all types of literature written for combined voices, and concertizes with other university choral ensembles and in separate performances on and off campus.

Vocal Performance Workshop/Opera Scenes

Vocal Performance Workshop in the Fall focuses on teaching students the skills of interpretation and acting in solo and small scene settings. Students analyze music, emotion, and text to create interpretations, then practice physicalizing them in performance. In the Spring, the Opera Scenes class prepares a public performance of scenes, short shows and/or solos from a wide variety of genres including opera, musical theatre, pop, and original works.

Past full productions include Signor Deluso by Pasatieri, Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti, Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Poulenc’s La Voix humaine, Menotti’s The Telephone, and The Old Maid and the Thief and Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. 

Commercial Ensemble

The CMU Commercial Ensemble serves as the primary training ensemble for students majoring in commercial guitar, bass, key, drumset and voice and provides diverse musical experiences for all music majors and non-major participants. The ensemble plays at venues throughout the community and is featured on the CMU at Warehouse 2565 performance series. Students take an active role in the ensemble by composing and arranging music, booking gigs, and producing concerts. Repertoire is chosen from many different contemporary music genres.