Campanella Children's Choir - USA
Campanella Children's Choir was founded in the spring of 2000 and currently acts as the core of Campanella Educational Center. Throughout the past 22 years, it focused on discovering and nurturing children’s creative talents, broadening their cultural horizons and promoting the cultural heritage of the many ethnic communities that made Chicago suburbs their home. As the choir grew from a small group of singing toddlers to an award-winning choral ensemble, the close embrace of diversity became a core part of Campanella Educational Center, with a main goal to help children find and develop their artistic individuality through music, arts, and teamwork.
Today, our choir ensembles offer escalating, age-appropriate levels of challenge. In addition to weekly rehearsals, children can also take art and language enrichment classes offered through the Campanella Educational Center. Our programs prepare the kids for the future as intelligent, well-rounded leaders in whatever career field or artistic endeavor they choose to pursue.
Students from diverse cultural backgrounds learn and grow together in a cooperative and stimulating creative environment. At Campanella, children perform songs in many languages - English, Ukrainian, Spanish, French, Czech, Yiddish, Italian, German, African Bemba and Xhosa, and more. It teaches them to understand, support, and accept each other's differences while working cooperatively as a team.
Community involvement has been of paramount importance to Campanella. Over the years, the choir has performed at the Northbrook Celebration of Cultures Festival, the Chicago’s Taste of Polonia festival, Illinois Holocaust Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, Northbrook Public Library, Wheeling Park District, and Skokie Public Library. Given how many of our families trace their roots to Eastern European countries that have bore the brunt of the Nazi atrocities during World War II, performing at the Holocaust Museum is especially important to us. The performances bring together a significant audience of Holocaust survivors and their descendants, bring voices of the new generation to the museum, and give children a priceless opportunity to feel their heritage.
Campanella Concert Choir has been a participant of the National Heritage Festival since 2006. Achievements at the festival include highest ranking and Gold Medal in 2016, 2012, 2011 and 2010, Gold medal in 2009 and Outstanding Choral Group award in 2008. In May 2012, 2015 and 2018 the group was featured on “Introductions”, a program on Chicago area’s WFMT Classical music radio station. Campanella Concert Choir traveled to New York City to sing in the 2019 National Children’s Festival Chorus at Carnegie Hall. The choir also sang The National Anthem at The Arie Crown Theater in Chicago in August of 2022 in front of a huge audience of 4,000 people.
Most recently, Campanella won the auditions to represent the State of Illinois at the July 2021 International Choral Competition Summa Cum Laude Festival in Vienna, Austria. The choir was recently selected as a FINALIST in the youth division of The American Prize national non-profit competitions in the performing arts.
Marianna Kosaya was born in Kiev, Ukraine. Marianna’s passion for choral music derives in large part from her participation in the world-renowned children’s choir Shchedrik. Marianna went on to study at the Kiev State Pedagogical University, graduating with an M.A. in Music Education and Choir Conducting. Marianna immigrated to the United States, where she continued her music career. Upon arrival in Chicago, Marianna formed a children's choir (at its inception, a group of only a few toddlers), which was to develop into what today is the Campanella Children’s Choir. Under Marianna’s leadership, the choir has become a competitive ensemble that performs widely throughout Chicago. Moreover, the choir has inspired the development of the Campanella Children's Educational center, where Marianna serves as the Artistic Director. Marianna maintains an active voice and piano studio and collaborates with a number of Chicago musical ensembles.