The Heart of Columbia Chorus is a chapter of Sweet Adelines International. We began rehearsing in September 2007 and received our official charter on December 10, 2008 with 47 members. We are a member of Region 14, Heart of the Blue Ridge, which includes other member choruses in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Sweet Adelines International, our parent organization, was established in 1945 by Edna Mae Anderson of Tulsa, Oklahoma. She brought together a group of women who wanted to participate in the "chord-ringing, fun-filled harmony" that their husbands as members of the Barbershop Harmony Society were singing. The goal was to teach and train its members in music and to create and promote barbershop quartets and other musical groups. Under the leadership of Edna Mae Anderson an 85-member chorus was incorporated under the name, Atomaton (for "an atom of an idea and a ton of energy" that recognized the Atomic Age.
Sweet Adelines went international on March 23, 1953 when the first chapter outside of the United States was chartered in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. The name officially changed to Sweet Adelines International in May 1991. In 2012 Sweet Adelines International claimed a membership of 24,000 women, all singing in English. It includes choruses in most of the fifty United States as well as in Australia, Canada, England, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Scotland, Sweden, Wales and the Netherlands. Headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the organization encompasses more than 1,200 registered quartets and 600 choruses. Member choruses are divided into 28 geographical regions numbering 1 - 35.