The twenty-six-member Carolina Chamber Chorale, based in Charleston, South Carolina, was founded in 1999 and debuted to critical acclaim with two programs at the 2000 Piccolo Spoleto Festival. Its first commercial recording, The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore, featured music by Menotti, Jack Gottlieb, and R. Murray Schafer. The Chorale’s founder and music director, Timothy Koch, studied at Wesleyan University, the University of Illinois, and the Eastman School of Music. A champion of contemporary choral music, in 1998 he led the University of Southern Mississippi Symphony Orchestra and Southern Chorale in an East Coast tour to honor the seventieth birthday of Samuel Adler.