The Department of Vocal Arts offers students numerous performance opportunities. Students in Choral Activities perform in one or more ensembles within Temple University Choirs, with opportunities to perform at professional conferences, as well as our annual concert at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts with the Temple University Symphony Orchestra. Graduate student conductors give two recitals and have opportunities to conduct six of our seven choirs in performance.

Temple's choirs have enjoyed a rich tradition of excellence under the batons of some of Philadelphia's most prominent conductors. Between the 1940s and 1980s, the combined choirs performed annually with The Philadelphia Orchestra, and since 2002 have collaborated annually with the Temple University Symphony Orchestra at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. All choirs are open to Temple students of all majors by audition. Singing Owls is open to all members of the community.

Choral Activities has been led by some of the profession’s finest musicians, including Elaine Brown, founder of Singing City in Philadelphia; the late Robert Page; and Professor Emeritus Alan Harler, winner of Chorus America's Michael Korn Founders Award for Development of the Professional Choral Art. Dr. Paul Rardin, Elaine Brown Chair of Choral Music, has overseen the department since 2011. Starting Fall 2025, Dr. Rollo Dilworth will become the Elaine Brown Chair and Chair of Vocal Arts.

Temple Choirs embrace both standard choral works and contemporary music from all around the world. In 1967, under the preparation of Robert Page and the baton of Eugene Ormandy, the choirs performed Carl Orff’s Catulli Carmina with The Philadelphia Orchestra, a performance that tied with Leonard Bernstein’s Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 for that year’s Grammy Award for Best Classical Choral Performance (Other Than Opera). In 2015, the Concert Choir and members of the University Singers joined The Philadelphia Orchestra and Westminster Symphonic Chorus for a four-performance run of Bernstein's MASS under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin. More recent engagements include invited conference performances for the National Collegiate Choral Organization and American Choral Directors Association Eastern Division, as well as a performance of Bach motets with special guest conductor Helmuth Rilling.

Watch the 2016 performance of Orff's Carmina Burana at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.