Tara Winds Clarinet Choir

Founded in 2011 by music director and principal conductor Dickson Grimes, the Tara Winds Clarinet Choir (TWCC) is composed of members of Tara Winds, “Georgia’s Community Band”, renowned worldwide for its musical excellence. TWCC is dedicated to giving inspiring performances and introducing the richness and variety of the clarinet choir and its repertoire to all.

TWCC on stage at their Carnegie Hall performance in 2022.

Choir members are adults from diverse backgrounds and professions. Members of the group are active professionals or are retired from music education, engineering, business, and technology fields. Most have collegiate musical experience. Members are dedicated to inspiring those of all ages to “keep on playing” and to show that creating and performing music is a worthy and enriching lifelong endeavor.

Past performances of note include:


TWCC News

An Amazing Gift of New Music

New composition honoring one of our members and her father

Some pieces of music are born from friendship, guided by timing that feels almost meant to be.

Composer Andrés Soto and clarinetist Dina Rosas met in 2005 as undergraduate music majors at Hofstra University. They quickly became close friends, spending countless hours rehearsing, performing, laughing and dreaming about the future. Dina always imagined having a classroom of her own, inspiring the next generation, while Andrés dreamed of composing memorable orchestral works for symphonies and film. Even then, he teased her for always moving a “million miles an hour” a pace she proudly keeps to this day.

Over the years, both friends built extraordinary careers: Andrés as a Latin Grammy-nominated composer for concert, film, and television, with works performed by the New York Philharmonic, Juilliard Pre-College Symphony, and many others, and a catalogue of published works with Universal Production Music; and Dina as a dedicated music educator and clarinetist. Through all of life’s changes, they remained close - trading jokes, encouragement and stories of their latest adventures. Despite Andrés’ busy schedule, Dina never stopped asking when he might write something for the Tara Winds Clarinet Choir.

In the summer of 2025, their long-imagined collaboration finally came to life when Andrés agreed to write a piece for the Tara Winds Clarinet Choir. Soon after, Dina’s father passed away unexpectedly; it was a loss that deeply moved them both and gave new meaning to the timing of the work. While Capricho is not a memorial work, it captures the spirit and spark of friendship: fast, fun and sometimes a little frantic, just like the pace of life that has always connected these two musicians.

Tara Winds Clarinet Choir is deeply grateful to Andrés for this fun new piece and looks forward to sharing it with audiences soon.

ClarinetFest 2024

TWCC performed at the 2024 International Clarinet Association “ClarinetFest” in Dublin, Ireland on August 3, 2024. TWCC was invited to perform at this invitational event with applications being submitted by the finest clarinetists and clarinet ensembles from across the world. We are honored and humbled to have been selected.

Our program included works by Brahms, Grainger, Dupre, Florence Price, and a little Irish surprise transcribed by our music director, Dickson Grimes.

A special thanks to clarinet friends who performed with us:

A very special thanks to Dina Rosas, who provided rehearsal space at the Atlanta International School (where she is a faculty member), and also designed the commemorative logo for our performance.


Collaboration between the Atlanta International School and TWCC

When TWCC performed the premiere of member Jack Aguirre’s composition, “Radium Girls” in November 2023, little did we know the unique and rich experiences that would follow.

Aguirre's work was inspired by the tragic story of women who painted radium on watch dials in the early 1900s. Unaware of the dangers of the radioactive substance, they would lick the tips of their paintbrushes to keep them pointed, unknowingly ingesting the harmful radium. The composition is a masterful blend of atonal and minimalistic techniques, and the Tara Winds Clarinet Choir had the opportunity to world premiere it at the Atlanta Clarinet Day 2024 this past November.

Coincidentally, around this time, the theater department at Atlanta International School (AIS) announced its production of the "Radium Girls" stage play set for April. The serendipity of this timing opened the door to an extraordinary collaboration involving AIS's theater and music students, the Tara Winds Clarinet Choir, and the composer himself.

In an exciting fusion of artistic disciplines, TWCC member and AIS faculty member Dina Rosas organized a professional recording session where the Tara Winds Clarinet Choir and AIS clarinetists collaborated directly with the composer. This session was not only a unique opportunity for AIS students to engage in the professional recording process but also a firsthand experience of the meticulousness and dedication required to bring music to life. TWCC members’ interactions with the AIS clarinet students was an example of our goal to show that playing an instrument can be a life long, rewarding experience.

The composition was integrated into the stage performance as incidental music, enhancing the narrative depth of the "Radium Girls" production.


Current TWCC Members