Maryland Choral Exchange

This is an idea that developed over this weekend, and before acting on it, I'd like to bat it around with all of you here in the Maryland Music weblog and mailing list.

I would like a way to unify the church-choir community in our area. As you all know, we're working on a fairly significant performance opportunity right around tax time. (April 15 & 16) I've seen a few other big performance opportunities go by. I would like a way to get the word out quickly to many other church choir directors and singers about what we're doing, and the fact that a) we would welcome more singers and b) we would welcome additional churches that wanted to participate and host a performance.

Similarly, when some other churches are cooperating to present, say, the Brahms' German Requiem, as happened recently in Silver Spring, I want to know about it early enough so that I can get involved.

My idea is to start a weblog and calendar for exactly this purpose. One possible title for the site would be Maryland Choral Exchange, and it might be worth registering a domain like MDCE.org for these purposes.

The calendar and weblog would provide a place for any choir to list the major performances they are proposing, along with comments and links to further information, including rehearsal schedules and locations. Choir directors and singers could watch the site (or subscribe via RSS) to see what opportunities are coming up.

How does this idea strike you? Can you imagine this becoming a useful resource? How would you reformulate or restate the idea to make it more appealing or useful to all church choirs? How would you get the word out to all these singers and directors after the site is up and operational?

As always, your comments will have a longer shelf-life if you post them directly to the weblog.