Burstin’ with Broadway was founded in January of 2005 by Dominique Hogan. The idea came out of a simple premise that perhaps others enjoy musical theatre music as much as she does. The second premise was that singing should not be an activity exclusive to those with musical training, she had met many talented singers who didn’t read music or who had little to no classical musical training. And so… Burstin’ with Broadway was born, a non-auditioned community choir dedicated to singing Musical Theatre repertoire on the North Shore.

“We began with 8 people in my living room” on a snowy January day. Some of those members are still in the group. “Within 2 months we had grown to 25 members and my living room was becoming tight” says Dominique. So the choir’s rehearsals were moved to an Elementary school music room. Burstin’ with Broadway had its first concert in May of 2005 at Mount Seymour United Church with 17 on stage. We also sang our first outreach concerts that year.

The following September we moved to the John Braithwaite Centre because we needed a larger space to rehearse. “People had been calling after the concert expressing the desire to join and I told them to just show up at the first rehearsal, I had no idea what was going to happen” says Dominique.  The first rehearsal we had a line up down the hall, 50 people had come to register! This space could only hold 60 maximum and it took an hour to get people registered, we ran out of music as we’d expected only 30 or so.  The end of that year we moved again, anticipating we may have more interest, and we did. The following year 85! Since 2009 we have had over 100 members, we also now have a wait list for women interested in joining, as we are beginning to balance out the men and women more and more each year. For quite a number of years our waitlist was well over 2 years long, however we have now expanded to 175 and are able to keep our waitlist to about 6 months- 1 year.

It has been an exciting journey, and we have an exciting, energetic group of people.

“Your shows are fantastic.  I came expecting a ‘community chorus’ and left feeling like I’d seen a professional production!  I can’t believe this is an amateur choir.  The visuals were stunning, the lighting, and band so professional.  I was utterly shocked and amazed by the quality of this production. Kudos to the entire team.” – audience member concert 2011.