El Faro (“The Lighthouse”) Youth Chorus is an outreach program of Coro Lux providing high-quality choral music education and performance experiences to young people of the Albuquerque area. With its unique dedication to both excellence in choral musicianship and trauma informed principles, El Faro is a safe, fun, and inviting space for music-making and voice building for youth ages 7-18.

We sing music in a wide variety of styles, and we learn about many cultures, languages, and historical periods through our repertoire. We also learn about breathing, body awareness, vocal health, and stage presence, and of course, we learn how to read and understand music. Music and singing are wonderful ways of sharing our own stories and the stories of people long ago, far away, right here, and right now. Young people have an amazing capacity to expand their own perspectives and grow their own voices through the music they learn, and that is exactly our intention and our purpose in El Faro.

For El Faro, “trauma informed” means we believe in supporting one another through life’s challenges in the way we learn, teach, communicate, and sing. Our singers come from different backgrounds, and we understand that the story of how we came to El Faro contains both happy and sad, easy and challenging, simple and complicated times. We come to rehearsal as we are, and rehearsal must first be a place of safety and support in order to be a place of learning, growth, and excellence.

If you’re interested in learning more, please email El Faro‘s conductor, Gabrielle Dietrich, at gdietrich227@gmail.com.

Due to the increased risk of respiratory illness transmission through singing, all singers are required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 at least two weeks before the first rehearsal they attend.

El Faro Youth Chorus rehearses on Thursday afternoons from 4:30-6:00pm at St. Paul Lutheran Church.