and NIHCC Keyboard Artist Maribeth Gowen (June 2024).
(Bob Johnson, director from 2009-2024 passed away in November 2025. His kindness and love of music will be remembered by all who sang with him)
The NIH Community Chorus performs alongside the NIH Community Orchestra twice each season. The groups have performed works by Brahms, Berlioz, Mozart, Handel, Copland, Corigliano, Maurice Durufle, Gilbert and Sullivan, Randall Thompson, Gwyneth Walker.
The chorus rehearses Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m., September through early June, at Saint Mark Presbyterian Church.
Singers interested in joining the NIHCC should contact us through our website https://nihcommchorus.wordpress.com/contact/. There are no auditions or other requirements to join the chorus except a love of music. Members pay dues which help to support chorus operations. Accommodations can be made for those with financial difficulties.
Joseph Sorge, Music Director
NIH Community Chorus
Joseph Sorge comes to the NIH Community Chorus from the Victorian Lyric Opera Company of Rockville, where he recently stepped down after 15 years as the Artistic Director; and still serves as their principal music director, a post he has held since 2003. As Artistic Director, he was responsible for starting their September concert series, bringing rarely performed works to the F. Scott Fitzgerald stage, such as Naughty Marietta, The Desert Song, The Gypsy Baron, and several operettas written by John Philip Sousa. He has also directed fully-staged productions of VLOC’s standard repertoire of all 13 Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, many of them more than once.
Prior to Mr. Sorge joining the Victorian Lyric Opera, he had a 25-year career performing principal roles with many local theater companies. He has acted and sung in many standard Broadway shows, such as: Company, 1776, West Side Story, The Fantasticks, Brigadoon, Damn Yankees, and more. From 1995 – 2015, he was the choir director at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in College Park. In 2011, he was awarded Best Conductor for The Mikado at The Gettysburg International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival. In 2012 and 2015, Maestro Sorge took the podium as a guest conductor at the annual Messiah Sing-Along at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
