Girls Chorus launches co-ed special needs choir

The Tucson Girls Chorus this week launches its newest engagement choir, this one for girls and boys with special needs.

The Tutti Choir held its first session this week with board-certified music therapist Sierra Norris leading kids in second through eighth grades in sensory-enriched music theory and vocal classes. The goal is to eventually have the participants perform a concert, said Tucson Girls Chorus Director Marcela Molina.

“My vision and my dream is that we will be able to have a concert on their own so they will be able to share a product and be empowered,” she said. “We feel strongly about our mission of serving the community in different ways of impacting it with music.”

The Tutti Choir is Molina’s latest effort to provide musical opportunities to all corners of the greater Tucson community. In the past several years, she introduced three engagement choirs — South Choir at Gallego Intermediate Fine Arts Magnet School; Downtown Choir at Imago Dei Middle School; and McCorkle School Choir at Mary Belle McCorkle Academy of Excellence K-8 School — for underserved girls.

But this choir might be her most ambitious. As far as she and Norris know, this is the only community-wide, public choir for kids with physical and learning disabilities in Tucson. And it’s one that both agree is sorely needed.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

“There’s a lot of reasons why parents of children with disabilities or kids with disabilities believe they cannot take part” in a choir, Norris said, not the least of which is the stigma they perceive is attached to their disability.

“The choir is considered to be a safe space to engage in music where everyone’s learning style is provided for and appreciated and celebrated,” Norris said.

Norris shares Molina’s goal of giving the Tutti Choir a chance to perform publicly “and have their voices heard.”

“I feel like a lot of times music opportunities provided for individuals with disabilities are recreational or therapeutic,” she said. “It’s always about something else, them getting better at social skills or something else,” she said. “That’s an inherent injustice. Making music for the sake of making music is human and good.”