With support from the California Arts Council, the Long Beach Youth Chorus will be able to offset the loss of operating revenue during the 2020-21 season, recoup the additional costs of operating virtually, and be able to continue offering negligible tuition costs to our families, hard hit by the pandemic.
The Long Beach Youth Chorus was started in 2017 under the guidance of Executive Director Stan DeWitt and Artistic Director Steven Clausen to serve the children and youth of Long Beach and surrounding communities (Carson, Bellflower, Lakewood, Cerritos, Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, etc.), an area of over half a million residents. Although Long Beach is the 7th largest city by population in California and the 39th largest in the country, it has never had a significant civic children or youth chorus, and the local school districts do not have choirs in all of their schools. The Long Beach Youth Chorus was founded to fill that gap. In addition, we have kept our tuition at exceedingly low levels with the sole goal that no child should ever be dissuaded from singing due to financial reasons. Our goal is to make it possible for every child to have a chance to sing. Our current Artistic Director is Harlee Balajadia.