All are welcome!
The choir rehearses every Thursday from 7:30 to 9:30pm at the church during the school year. Refreshments are provided. All are welcome, and no experience or tryout is needed. Questions about joining? Email Kim Rankin, Choir Director, at kim@mpcfamily.org
Performance Samples
Interested in listening to some of the Major Works performed by the choir? Please visit our Music Samples page.
Sunday Celebration
Music is an integral part of our Sunday Celebration. Our Associate in Music is Kim Rankin and our Organist is Marcia Roy. They work together to weave music into our Sunday Service that will enhance and emphasize the day’s celebration, sermon, and prayer.
The MPC Choir
Montclair Presbyterian Church has a dynamic, versatile music ensemble that performs every Sunday in the fall, winter and spring seasons. Our repertoire ranges from Mozart to Menotti to Mancini to Monteverdi. Our choir may sing an easy, familiar hymn one week and perform a challenging major work, complete with orchestra, the next. Our selections range from a traditional hymn to a song from a hit Broadway musical.
Everyone is welcome to join the Choir, whether a professional or an occasional singer. There is no audition. Each new choir season begins with a BBQ and an all-day retreat. Our weekly rehearsals start mid-September and continue until the end of May. Sunday mornings, we gather for a short rehearsal before Celebration.
MPC Chestnut Choir
This is a supplemental choir that comes into action when the choir does “chestnut” or familiar, easy to learn songs. This is a group of people who can’t make a weekly commitment or who want to sing music that is accessible. Chestnut choir rehearses on the same Sunday that the Anthem is sung.
Other Music and Major Works
Each year, our choir performs two or more major works. One major work is always a celebration of the Advent Season and often includes our children and youth. Past selections have included: The First Nowell – A Nativity Play, a medieval celebration and drama of the Christmas Story; Messe de Minuit pour Noel (Midnight Mass for Christmas) by the French composer, Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643–1704); and The First Noel by Ralph Vaughan Williams, a Nativity play with the MPC Choir and MPC children and youth. Other major works during celebration have included: Songs of Democracy from the poem by Walt Whitman with music by Howard Hanson; Somewhere by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim from West Side Story. This year we are working on Requiem by Maurice Duruflé.
Guest Ensembles
Soloists, quartets, musical groups and Ensemble groups enliven many Sunday Celebrations. The Barrelhouse Jazz Band, a foursome from our congregation, appears regularly for our Easter service and our courtyard celebration on Labor Day Weekend. The Pacific BoyChoir sings during our Celebration of Epiphany. Other groups who regularly add to Sunday Celebration include The Exeter String Quartet; the women’s vocal ensemble, “Cecilia”; The Brazilian Drum Corp; Voices Lesbian Ensemble; and the Oakland/East Bay Gay Men’s Chorus. Soloists, both singers and musicians, from within our congregation and from without, contribute to our Sunday service.