Our home at St. Peter’s

Charlotte Choir School is In Residence at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in the heart of Uptown Charlotte, and our unique partnership with St. Peter’s extends three decades.

Our founding partner

Charlotte Choir School and St. Peter’s have worked in partnership to make choral music accessible to the Charlotte community and provide us our home.

Our home is St. Peter’s Episcopal Church at the corner of Seventh and Tryon in Uptown Charlotte. It’s been our home for a long time — we trace our history back more than a century to the first Boys Choir at St. Peter’s established in 1894. The first Girls Choir was established in 1924. In those early days, choristers would travel to the church by streetcar and were paid 5¢ for their service to the church community.

In 1993, the Church provided the resources necessary to start a children’s choir founded in the English choral tradition, a program that would be distinct from the church’s music ministry. From day one, we’ve been an auditioned community children’s choir open to talented young people from across Charlotte.

Read more about our program

The parish believes in the power of accessible, excellent music education and choral performance, and remains our leading supporter. Charlotte Choir School was incorporated as an independent nonprofit in 2001, and has a formal covenant, last revised in 2011, with St. Peter’s outlining our unique partnership.

St. Peter’s provides significant financial and in-kind resources to our program. Among other contributions, the parish provides our rehearsal, performance, and office space and donates the time of our Artistic Director, who also serves as organist and choirmaster at the church.

Enriching the life of St. Peter’s

As we instill in our choristers a passion for choral music, we enhance the musical life of St. Peter’s.

While our program is independently governed, we work in close partnership with St. Peter’s to be active stewards of the important community housed at the church. As organizations, we share a common set of values, including especially a drive for diversity that accepts all talented children into our program without regard to race, religious, or economic differences, among others.

We welcome singers from any faith tradition, or no faith tradition, but we are rooted in the traditions of Anglican choral music and the Royal School of Church Music. As such, we do take part in services at St. Peter’s. We regularly lead Evensong, the evening prayer service, and sing for Sunday services on occasion.

Our three mainstage concerts each season are held at St. Peter’s, and we’re proud to hold the name of the parish before the community through our performances and recruitment. Thousands of people each season become familiar with the work of the St. Peter’s community because of Charlotte Choir School.

Providing a living laboratory

Our program is built on English choral traditions, and our home at St. Peter’s provides a proper context for this music.

English cathedral choirs for young men and women is a centuries long tradition, and our program is built on that history and repertoire. We sing music across genres, but British church music is the cornerstone.

St. Peter’s, enabled by their commitment to excellent music in their parish life, provides a true living laboratory for our choristers to experience this music in the setting and for the purpose for which it was conceived. This dimension is not available in other choral settings, and defines a Charlotte Choir School experience.

The parish provides an historical context for Charlotte Choir School, with our singers continuing a tradition that began in Charlotte more than 125 years ago, and in England more than 1,500 years ago.

We are also provided resources we could not elsewhere, including the use of the Van Ness Hamrick organ, and artistic leadership from Elizabeth Lenti, the church’s choirmaster.