Women's Choir

Welcome to the Women's Repertoire and Standards webpage! All the women's chairs at the division, state and national levels, look forward to serving you.

Dear ACDA friends,

The 24- member ACDA Women's Commissioning Consortium has received the finalized compositions from their chosen composers,  Elizabeth Alexander of Minneapolis and Ola Gjeilo of New York City. 

Alexander's work, entitled Reasons, is based on a poem by the composer "Reasons for the Perpetuation of Slavery."  The composer writes: "My interest in slavery as an economic and cultural institution began with a desire to understand that chapter in United States history, but inevitably it led far beyond that.  Reasons is a meditation on the timeless institution of slavery, in the past, present, and the foreseeable future.  This litany of temptations, rationalizations and justifications pours forth with ferocity, urgency, wry humor and compassion.  Just as slavery is both ubiquitous and hidden, tucked into the corners of this piece are echos of music from many different times and places."  For more information about Reasons, to hear a recording by Cantala of Lawrence University, or to purchase the music, go to  http://www.elizabethalexander.com/works/reasons.html  

Gjeilo's work is called Tundra. The lyrics are written by Charles Anthony Silvestri, specifically for this work. He explains," I asked Tony to write a text based on the title, Tundra, and some photos of a part of my native Norway that is very dear to me; the Hardangervidda mountain plateau, close to where my father grew up, in the ski resort town called Geilo, in the mountains between Oslo and Bergen. Here is a link to some info and nice pictures: Photographs of Hardangervidda  Hardangervidda is Europe's largest mountain plateau, and a large part of it is tundra (areas where the subsoil is permafrost, or permanently frozen soil/Treeless plain).  This area is quite barren, and intensely beautiful. It is easy to feel that you are treading on sacred land, which Tony so wonderfully expresses in his text."

Wide, worn and weathered,

Sacred expanse

Of green and white and granite grey;

Snowy patches strewn,

Anchored to the craggy earth, 

Unmoving;

While clouds dance

Across the vast, eternal sky.

Gjeilo continues, "In the music, I wanted to emphasize the slight monotony of the landscape with a steady and quite repetitive (pattern-wise) piano part, in a kind of post-minimalist style. The choir material is comprised mainly of chord 'pads' and an atmospheric melody. The little soprano solos scattered around the piece are meant more as colorings, an obbligato, than a melodic focal point."  Plans for publication are not yet finalized.