For Advocate of Women's Choirs, Fostering Student Engagement Is a Song
By Eric Kelderman – Reprinted from The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 18, 2010
When Iris S. Levine was an undergraduate at the University of New Hampshire at Durham, women's choirs like the one she belonged to were not premier ensembles and got little attention from administrators or composers.
Women's choirs have come a long way since then. They are now well recognized as a means to not only broaden students' musical experience but to help keep them enrolled.
Ms. Levine, chairwoman of the music department at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, intends to help that trend continue in her new role, as the national repertoire and standards chair for women's choruses for the American Choral Directors Association. She plans to be a strong advocate for women's choirs, encouraging conductors to form such groups at their schools and colleges. She will also recommend new repertoire and commission new compositions that meet the choirs' musical and emotional needs.
"When you're working with a women's chorus, you're dealing with, sometime along the way, these women have not been treated at the same level. That's a given," she said.