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Working In Concert
A Timeline that brings us to Now
1995: Claudia Hommel with music director/pianist Bob Moreen offer, on tour and in the Chicago area, the first “Cabaret in the Classroom” performances of Souvenirs of Paris, 1950; master classes for high school musicians; and That’s What Makes Paris Paree for elementary schools .
1997: Claudia Hommel initiates a series of discussions among cabaret performers, asking “Can we create a cabaret scene in Chicago?” The membership-based Chicago Cabaret Professionals is organized in 1998 as a nonprofit organization to advocate the art of cabaret.
1999-2000: The first SongShop sessions are held at Sherwood Conservatory.
2003: SongShop is offered as an ongoing workshop by the Community Music Division of DePaul University School of Music.
2004: The first SongShop Live performance is brought to Davenport’s Cabaret Room. By 2022, more than 55 concerts are produced with SongShop participants.
2006: Oak Park-based Bellissima Opera is founded by Christine Steyer, Paul Geiger and others to preserve and promote the tradition of the classically-trained vocal artist and to expand public appreciation of both opera and classical music,
2008: Bellissima launches Bellissima Opera Outreach, its educational component which brings music to more than 23,000 students, often at no cost to schools.
2010: Bellissima Opera forms a nonprofit organization to carry out its work.
2014: Christine Steyer and Claudia Hommel meet at the Naked Voice Institute led by Stephen Smith at Northwestern University.
2014: Bellissima Opera Outreach holds the first workshops that will develop the underlying themes, characters and lyrics for the opera Future Perfect, one of the first stories in Bellissima’s Tales of Transcendence .
Early 2017: Claudia, Elizabeth Doyle and Lynne Jordan are joined by Roxane Assaf in Chicago, Mylène Launay and Jean-Claude Orfali in Paris to launch the first international exchange of Chicago Paris Cabaret Connexion, held in Paris in September.
2018: Chicago Paris Cabaret Connexion is held in Chicago for an eight-day international exchange October-November.
Early 2019: Bellissima Opera joins the Cabaret Connexion, SongShop and classroom programs to form Working In Concert.
Early 2019: Working In Concert partners with Chicago Cabaret Professionals, Acts Of Kindness Cabaret, and The Cabaret Project to plan the first Chicago Cabaret Week. Choose Chicago, the city’s tourism bureau, provides marketing support. Scheduled for March 2020, the festival is postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic until May 2022.
September 2019: The Cabaret Connexion’s Tour de France takes a delegation of 25 artists to Sète, Montpellier and Paris, France for eleven days of workshops and performances with French and British cohorts.
August–October 2020: In spite of pandemic restrictions, Working In Concert hosts three garden concerts for SongShop Live.
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