American Choral Directors Association

The mission of ACDA is to inspire excellence and nurture lifelong involvement in choral music for everyone through education, performance, composition and advocacy.

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Composition

Thirty-Something: New Choral Music by Today’s Hottest Young Composers

Come ready to sing and hear the hottest new music being written today by some of the most exciting young and emerging composers. Indiana University Jacobs School of Music choral conducting faculty member Dominick Di Orio and NOTUS: Contemporary Vocal Ensemble will introduce you to these “hot-off-the-press” works for mixed chorus by Zachary Wadsworth, Dale […]

Cincinnati OH.
Dominick DiOrio



Music and Movies: Memories and Movements

This session, through discussion and example utilizing documentary film trailers, will explore choral music in film and the impact and influence on today’s world of musical performance, composition, historical remembrance, and as a conduit for societal change. Three new and important documentary features will be presented: Requiem for my Mother follows the compositional journey of […]

Dallas, TX



New Choral Music from Mexico

For the past five years, VocalEssence, through its ëCantarÈí program has brought composers from Mexico to Minnesota to be in residence at elementary and high schools, composing music for the young people in selected schools culminating in a May concert where all the music is performed. This session will demonstrate some of the music that […]

Dallas, TX
Philip Brunelle



The Music of Stephen Paulus

Composer Stephen Paulus, whose oratorio To Be Certain of the Dawn will be performed during the conference, will lead a reading session of his music and discuss his compositional process, the way he marries text to music, and how he thinks about musical structure in writing choral music.

Madison, WI
Stephen Paulus



The Genesis and Structure of To Be Certain of the Dawn

To Be Certain of the Dawn, a Holocaust memorial oratorio written by Stephen Paulus, with libretto by Michael Dennis Browne, was written as a result of interfaith dialogue and with the purpose of encouraging ongoing conversation between people of faith. Paulus, Browne, and Father Michael O’Connell, Basilica of St. Mary’s, Minneapolis, who commissioned the work, […]

Madison, WI
Stephen Paulus