DANVILLE — The Vermilion Festival Chorus will lift voices in song to celebrate its 20th anniversary season with a full schedule of concerts and other performances.

The chorus was founded in 1989 by Richard Zielinski and David Schroeder, who has been the director for the past five years.

“The chorus was originally designed as a community and regional group to perform choral masterworks,” Schroeder said. “Over the years we have performed large-scale works with orchestra, as well as unaccompanied choral pieces from the Renaissance, to modern styles of composition.”

Zielinski and Schroeder came up with the idea to start a community chorus after more than 100 area people responded to their request for voices to sing Handel’s “Messiah” at St. James United Methodist Church during the Christmas season. At that time, Schroeder was the organist at St. James.

“We had a sellout crowd for that concert,” Schroeder said. “We figured if we could get that many singers to come out for the concert and also attract such a big audience, then there must be enough interest out there to form an ongoing community chorus.”

Schroeder started out as accompanist for the community chorus, and Zielinski was the director. Zielinski left the group after several years and eventually moved to Florida, where he founded the Richard Zielinski Singers chorus with 40 professional voices.

Schroeder has remained with the chorus through the past two decades and has played under several different directors who came from the University of Illinois. Larry Voorhees preceded Schroeder as director a couple of times, for a total of five years.

“I feel the chorus is good for the community,” Voorhees said. “Danville has a lot going for it when it comes to the arts.”

Schroeder’s father, Gene Schroeder, has been manager of the chorus for the past 15 years. “We have a good nucleus of singers we can count on every year,” he said, “and we’ve performed some good literature.”

“We’d love to attract more young people to join our chorus,” Dave Schroeder said. “There’s a lot of good voices out there, and we accept anyone from freshmen in high school through senior citizens.”

Dave Schroeder is music director at Trinity Lutheran Church and band and choir director at Bismarck-Henning Junior High School.

The VFC’s first concert will be at 3 p.m. Nov. 22 at Holy Family Catholic Church. The musical repertoire will include “O Holy Night” — a setting of Christmas carols by British composer and arranger John Rutter — and several additional pieces.

“A few of the selections will include audience participation,” Gene Schroeder said, “but that’s fitting, since our motto is ‘Unite the community in song.’”

The chorus also will participate in the Danville Symphony Orchestra concert on Dec. 12. They will be part of a larger choral group that will include other area choirs, as well as the choral department at Danville High School.

The VFC also will perform at the Festival of Trees in November at the David S. Palmer Arena.

After a Christmas break, the chorus will resume rehearsals in January to prepare for the spring concert: Schubert’s “Mass in G,” which will be presented in April.

“We are looking forward to our upcoming season and all of our performances,” Dave Schroeder said, “and especially to singing with the Danville Symphony at their holiday concert. We would love to have at least 50 singers for all of these performances.”

The chorus is accompanied by Jill Prasse.

TO JOIN

Vermilion Festival Chorus rehearsals are 7-9 p.m. every Monday at Holy Family Catholic Church, 444 E. Main St. No auditions are required to sing. For information, contact chorus manager Gene Schroeder at 431-0385 (work) or 446-7543 (home).