Viva Voce launches VV Silver Trust

Viva Voce has launched the VV Silver Trust as a fundraising vehicle to ensure its viability for the next 25 years.

Since its inception 25 years ago, Viva Voce has fashioned a reputation as one of the most innovative, accomplished and enduring chamber choirs in New Zealand ... and perhaps the most entertaining. The choir has become known for its original, themed programmes and the sheer variety of its music – from medieval to modern, from operatic and orchestral to the most intimate and intricate a cappella. Concerts such as Dial 'M' for Music, Vocal Locomotion and Four Weddings and a Choir, to name a very few, have populated our first quarter century, along with the orchestrally-accompanied Boy Wonder!, Dido and Aeneas and The Full Monte', as well as many broadcasts, private and corporate events, theme dinners and national tours.

Through all of that, we've been reluctant fundraisers. For the first several years of our life we didn't even apply for grants, thinking one should be able to live off concert earnings. We've never solicited donations or had a fee-paying friends' group. However, while our audiences have grown from twelve (Devonport in '85) to nearly 100 times that number (Auckland Town Hall in '08), discerning concertgoers now expect attractive publicity, comfortable central venues and of course professional-quality music ... which is laudable, but expensive. And income from ticket sales alone falls well short.

Over the first 25 years we've survived, but always on a handto-mouth basis, with choir members covering any shortfall themselves. And we want to ensure that we survive for another 25 – at least! To do that, we need a secure financial base, so we can continue to be innovative, mount regular orchestral and dramatic concerts, pay for the best venues and soloists, and keep what we do fresh, alive and sustainable.

More information can be found in the Silver Trust Brochure.