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.
By understanding how a composer analyzes, explores, and sets a text, a conductor can gain insights that will enhance score study, illuminate a choir’s understanding of the music, and inspire choir members and student composers in their creativity. As a conductor and composer, Dwight Bigler will demonstrate this process using his own and others’ compositions. […]
Jacksonville FL.Using solfège and popular songs to learn progressions is a great introduction to improvisational techniques. This session will use I-V-vi-IV to experiment with rhythm and melodies. From that gateway activity we can move to circle songs and vocal improvisation over other progressions. The goal is that activities such as this can help students to create […]
Jacksonville FL.For many students, the choral director is the only voice instructor they will ever have. How can we best serve those students and the students who receive private instruction outside our rehearsals? In an ideal world, the instruction offered in voice lessons and choral rehearsals would compliment each other and would never leave the student […]
Cincinnati OH.Because many students have no music teacher beside their choral director, their musical and vocal limitations are the choral director’s responsibility. The vocal warm-up, in addition to helping singers meet the immediate demands of the repertoire for their next concert, should systematically build the vocal skill set of our singers over time. This session will […]
Santa Barbara CA.Choral music educators continue to develop diverse concert programs based on a variety of considerations (i.e., genre, language, time period, tempo) to promote a well-balanced choral program and curriculum for ensemble singers. However, at the middle-school level, as in all stages of vocal development, it is also important for choral music educators to consider how […]
Baltimore MD.Cross-Choral Musicianship Training is aimed at developing vocal musicians with the skills and understanding to study and perform in virtually any musical context. Following the cross-training model, students learn several complementary systems for reading and sight-singing music to provide the greatest fluency in the widest range of settings—from the classroom to the symphony hall. Based […]
Dianne Berkun-Menaker
