Collaborative Arranging for Contemporary Choirs

Choral singers have long been trained to read written music accurately and carefully. What happens when we flip this modality over and create full and complete choral arrangements aurally? This class will show how to successfully use a collaborative model to select music, guide an arrangement process and ultimately tailor a musical piece to fit the singers in your group, rather than asking voices in any given group to fit what is written on a page. The collaborative arranging model helps to empower singers from diverse backgrounds with strong aural traditions, and encourages groups of all ages to have honest conversations around identity, brand, and messaging, leading to strong buy-in, attendance, and tradition and relationship building. This session will break down the pros and cons of collaborative arranging, and then detail the process of how to build a piece from start to finish, with audio and video examples from award winning collaborative arrangements. Attendees will then build a short collaborative arrangement together.