Essential Music

The University of Dayton Ensembles perform regularly on and off campus and are open to students from all academic majors. Ensembles are featured in the annual Celebration of the Arts performances at the Schuster Performing Arts Center, Dayton's premier performance venue.

The West Chester Symphony Orchestra, a nonprofit organization founded in 1997, is comprised of volunteer musicians who provide free entertainment to the community. The mission is to educate, enrich, and expose the local community and students to the arts while providing an artistic musical opportunity for orchestral musicians in the region.

Wind in the Woods is a versatile ensemble whose mission is to encourage interest in early music, to entertain, and to educate. Instruments used to bring to life medieval, renaissance, and baroque music include recorders, crumhorns, cornamuse, kordholt, gemshorn, viola da gamba, and lute. The group has been bringing the delightful sounds of renaissance music to the Miami Valley and beyond for almost 30 years!

An SATB ensemble, Wittenberg Choir is the singing ambassador for Wittenberg. In addition to performing each semester on campus, they tour each spring semester, performing sacred and secular repertoire throughout the region, state, and country.

Wittenberg offers the opportunity for students and community members to collaborate musically through their Chamber Orchestra, Jazz Ensemble, Symphonic Band, and Percussion Ensemble.

The World House Choir is a diverse, multicultural, mixed-voice community choir whose repertoire is drawn from different traditions including classical, global, folk, spirituals, gospel, and music of peace and justice struggles worldwide. The Choir performs music that motivates and inspires our communities toward justice, diversity, and equality as we strive for peace and build our web of mutuality.

Collegiate Chorale is the premier choral ensemble at Wright State University and is mostly comprised of majors within the School of Fine and Performing Arts. Touring annually, the Chorale has sung throughout the United States and Europe. The ensemble performs music selected from a wide variety of styles and genres, spanning the early Renaissance to the 21st century, including music taken from the worlds of folk music and popular entertainment. The Collegiate Chorale has been featured with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra to critical acclaim on numerous occasions.

The Chamber Orchestra has been Wright State University's premier orchestra for more than two decades. A unique performing ensemble comprised of faculty and students, the orchestra provides students an opportunity to perform side by side with their mentors. The Chamber Orchestra has distinguished itself with outstanding performances of music from Bach, Handel, Beethoven, and Schubert to Ravel, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and Piazzolla. Performances have led the Chamber Orchestra in concerts statewide, including invitations to perform at many Ohio Music Education Association Professional Conferences in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Dayton. The orchestra has appeared in performances throughout the Miami Valley, including performances at the Schuster Performing Arts Center, Dayton Arts Institute, and Corbett Auditorium at CCM and has been heard in radio broadcasts on classical radio WGUC, Cincinnati.

The Wright State University Symphony Orchestra has been continuously active in the Miami Valley of Ohio since 1966. It draws its members from the entire Dayton community, including university students, faculty, and other area musicians. The orchestra studies and performs a large repertoire of classical music from the Baroque to the Twenty-first Century. It also performs regularly with distinguished guest artists, choral ensembles, and outstanding student musicians selected in annual competition.

The Wright State University Wind Symphony is the university’s most elite symphonic band organization. Its student members, typically comprised of approximately 50 students, are chosen annually by competitive audition. The Wind Symphony performs the finest in symphonic wind repertoire, ranging from transcriptions to state-of-the-art original compositions.

Operating under the Yellow Springs Community Music umbrella, the YSCO welcomes string players of all ages who are proficient on their instruments. They aim to enrich the musical lives of both members and audiences through the performance of varied and challenging repertoire for orchestra, and/or orchestra and chorus. They usually present three to four concerts per year.

YSCB welcomes woodwind, brass and percussion players of all ages. They aim to provide enjoyment for their members through rehearsing and performing a varied and challenging repertoire, and enrichment to audiences in the greater Yellow Springs area.