A choral director, who has performed on Broadway, is setting up a new choir for young women in Letterkenny.
Douglas Carnes has a passion for working with young people and after moving to Donegal during the pandemic he realised there was a need for a safe space for young girls to come together to sing and feel part of a community.
Douglas and his wife Taryn, who were both born and bred in New York, moved here after Taryn got a job in Optum.
The couple, who welcomed their son Cillian three months ago, have always had a close connection to Donegal having got engaged here and honeymooned in the county.
Douglas’s love of music started at a young age when his mother flew him to Kingston, Jamaica to learn how to play Latin and African percussion.
He graduated from Five Towns College (FTC) in Long Island, New York with his bachelor’s in music education and his masters degree in choral conducting.
While there, he played percussion on Disney’s ‘The Lion King’ on Broadway and after graduating he worked in Harlem where he developed a choral curriculum for middle school-aged students focused on healthy singing and building relationships through the barbershop choral art form.
This led Douglas to relocate to Minneapolis in 2015 as the Artistic and Executive Director of the award-winning Great Northern Union Chorus.
Then in 2019 he transitioned back to working with young adults as the Artistic and Musical Director of Sing Out Loud young women’s choirs in Rochester, Minnesota.
All the while he taught at St Louis Park Middle School where he helped grow the choral department by over 300 per cent and took his choirs to two international youth singing competitions.
Douglas is currently pursuing his Doctorate of Musical Performance at The Royal Irish Academy of Music in Trinity College Dublin while he also embarks on this new journey as the founder of Danu Young Women’s Choir.
The choir’s all-female board of directors is made up of educators, mothers, community members, and musicians from Donegal and beyond.
This has been in the making for quite some time and the board and the director held their first meeting to begin preparations a year ago.
“We were looking around and realising there was no place outside of school and church for young girls to come together and rejoice in song,” Douglas told the Donegal News.
“Secondly, after the tragic passing of a young girl who was close to us in Letterkenny, we realised that there also needs to be a safe space where girls can grow with like-minded individuals.”
From his time leading the young women’s choir in Minnesota Douglas realised how transformative it was for the girls and how important it was for them to have an outlet.
“Although we are a choir at our core, we are also a family and community,” he added.
The choir has partnered with Coláiste Ailigh where rehearsals will be held every Sunday, starting on September 25, from 6pm to 8.30pm.
Information booklets were being distributed to local schools this week with auditions due to take place on Sunday, September 18 from 4pm to 8.30pm. However they will also open up more audition slots if certain times do not work for families and no one will be turned away that wants to audition before September 25.
The choir has big plans ahead with a Christmas concert in the pipeline as well as performances in Derry, Dublin and the US on the cards.
The choir is aimed at 13 to 19 year olds but it is Douglas’s aim within three years to grow this to cover for nine and under, 10-13 and 14-18.
This would mean girls will be able to join this choral organisation at five and go all the way through secondary school and there is even an opportunity for an alum choir for those over 19.
Sign up for an audition by emailing DYWCdirector@gmail.com.
The yearly fee for joining Danu Young Women’s Choir will be €200 which is less than €5 per rehearsal. There will also be payment plans and scholarships for families.
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