Anna Crusis Women’s Choir, the longest-running feminist chorus in the country, is bringing technology to the stage for its 40th-anniversary concert, “Reclaiming the ‘F’ Word,” running June 6-7.
While audiences can take in the performance at International House Philadelphia, Miriam Davidson, the choir’s artistic director, said Anna Crusis will also use the Internet to reach new fans.
“We’re going to be live-streaming the concert using Concert Window, which is a platform that is used a lot for independent artists who have concerts to cut down on traveling,” Davidson said. “We thought it might be a very interesting thing to try to do with a choral concert. I don’t know of anybody who has attempted to do that. We like to try and reach audiences that might have a hard time getting to our shows, which is part of our mission — to get to populations that might benefit from our performance but have trouble getting out. Instead of us going to them, we’re seeing if we can get it to them this way.”
The concert will also take the audience through the history of the choir, which has been performing in the Delaware Valley since 1975.
“We’re doing a big retrospective,” Davidson said. “We’re doing material from across the decades of our repertoire, as well as some new works. There will also be a photographic and video retrospective of the choir over the years.”
Davidson said that, in its four decades, the choir has tried to stick to its roots of performing songs with a message.
“We like to keep a lot of social-justice music in the forefront of out repertoire as well as continuing our work to promote work of women composers and work from little-heard composers that don’t have much of a venue for getting their work heard,” she said. “So that is something that has continued to stay with us since the beginning. We’re widening our scope, world-music wise, and trying to bring more of a contemporary feel also into the music that we’re doing.”
Anna Crusis Women’s Choir performs “Reclaiming the ‘F’ Word” 7:30 p.m. June 6 and 4 p.m. June 7 at International House Philadelphia, 3701 Chestnut St. For more information, call 215-387-5125 or visit www.annacrusis.com.