The Choir School
The Berlin Girls Choir was founded in 1986 at the Lindenkirche in Wilmersdorf. The aim of the initiators – church musician Gerhard Oppelt and soprano Karin Drewes – was to offer girls similar opportunities for choral singing as boys have had for centuries in boys’ choirs.
In order to form the Berlin Girls Choir into a high-quality body of sound, the initiators sought contact with the Wilmersdorf Music School (today: Academy of Music City West) soon after its founding. The connection to the music school ensures that the choir singers are taught by professional music teachers, choir conductors and singing teachers.
In 1998, the freelance composer, conductor and music teacher Sabine Wüsthoff took over the direction of the Berlin Girls Choir. She gave it a new structure and expanded its profile.
Today, the Berlin Girls Choir is a choir school for girls with five classes that build on each other: Basic Choir, Junior Choir, Junior Concert Choir, Concert Choir and Vocal Consort for former singers of the Concert Choir and young women with relevant choral experience.
In addition to the weekly choir rehearsals, the girls and young women receive choral voice training or singing lessons.
The repertoire of the Concert Choir and the Vocal Consort includes sacred and secular literature from all epochs to works by contemporary women composers. They sing à cappella, with piano accompaniment, chamber orchestras and symphony orchestras.
Both top ensembles repeatedly take part in regional, national and international competitions, where they have always won first prizes.
The Berlin Girls Choir maintains contacts with other girls’ choirs in Germany and abroad, participates in projects of well-known Berlin amateur choirs as well as the Berlin radio choirs and orchestras, and also performs in social institutions, at congresses, festivals and similar events.
Committed to its origins and affiliation, the Berlin Girls Choir also regularly participates in church services and community events, including those at the Lindenkirche, gives its own concerts in Berlin churches several times a year and cooperates for oratorio performances, e.g. with the Berlin Kantorei.
Over the course of 35 years, the unmistakable sound and effective stage presence of the Berlin Girls Choir have made it famous beyond the borders of the district and the city, both nationally and internationally.
In principle, every girl can be admitted to the Berlin Girls Choir. In accordance with our conviction that everyone can sing and that the voice is only formed through appropriate training, there is open access without an entrance examination in the three lower choir levels, the children’s choir section, provided there are currently free places. The goal of the choir school is the concert choir (youth choir), which is followed by the vocal consort (young women’s choir). For cross-entry into these two choirs, an audition, solid basic musical knowledge and adequate choral experience already acquired elsewhere are required.
The Berlin Girls Choir is an ensemble at the
