Tucson Girls Chorus celebrates 40th year with choir of 300-plus

Kindergartners and first-graders from the Bumblebee Singers will be near second- and third-graders in the Ladybugs and the fourth- and fifth-graders in the Hummingbirds Choir.

The middle-schoolers in the Mariposa Singers will be following the lead of the Jubilate Choir, comprised of eighth- through 12th-graders, and the Advanced Choir, covering ninth through 12th grades. 

Members of the TGC's engagement choirs, ensembles established at a handful of local schools, will also be represented along with alumni including some from those early days when Margie Kersey first started the program in the mid-1980s.

They are coming from near and far to add their voices in a program of repertoire that has come to define the Girls Chorus, from classical-leaning works dating to the Renaissance to more pop and jazz tunes and works that bridge cultural divides.

"There is a lot of everything, and that is what TGC is about," said Marcela Molina, who has led the chorus 20 of its 40 years. "It's about just trying to expose our girls to many styles of music, without any hierarchy of value, but that they understand that what makes that music really valuable is their relationship with those pieces."

Sunday's concert will be the group's second at Centennial Hall since it moved its annual holiday concert to the University of Arizona venue last December.

Molina said the group can no longer fit in the churches and other halls that have been their performance spaces over the past four decades. That's largely because the chorus has outgrown its initial vision, established when Kersey launched the group with 63 girls in 1985; its first concert was early the next year.

Kersey wanted to provide musical training and performance opportunities for Tucson girls as young as 6 through high school. Since Molina took over in 2006, she has grown the vision far beyond the core choirs, including by  adding the Bumblebee Singers in 2013 and the co-ed Tutti Choir in 2017, one of several Las Estrellas Engagement Choirs established to reach underserved girls.

The Tutti is comprised of girls and boys with physical and learning disabilities while the other choirs, established at several elementary schools in the Tucson area as well as one in Safford, are collaborations with the schools. The Girls Chorus works closely with school choir directors "to make sure that what we provide is what they need," Molina said. 

Sunday's concert will recognize TGC seniors including a few who started as Bumblebees and have continued through high school.

"This is the first year that we have girls who started in the Bumblebees and are graduating from the program," Molina said. "I have girls who have been here for 13 years now, and so the growth within our choirs is depicted there in that bittersweet moment of celebrating and acknowledging our seniors. Some of them have been with us for 13 years."

Sunday's concert begins at 4 p.m. at Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd. on the University of Arizona campus. Tickets are $26 through ticketmaster.com.