As directors, many of us want to write for our own choirs but struggle with the question “Am I a Composer?” Three of the country’s most respected conductor-composers share their stories about how they moved into composition from conducting, and offer strategies for getting started with your choirs.
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Releasing the Song Inside: Composing in Choral Classrooms
In this panel discussion, editors and contributing authors for the book Musicianship: Composing in Choir (2016) will lay the groundwork for engaging choral ensemble members in composing in choral classrooms. Acknowledging performance as the principal musical behavior in which choral ensembles engage, panelists will offer compelling arguments for including composition as a constituent of any […]
Lives of Song: Canadian and American Choral Music by Women Composers
The first day of this conference marks the 2017 celebration of International Women’s Day. Despite the significant contributions of women composers and conductors to the choral scene across Canada and the United States, programming continues to fall short with respect to female representation. This session seeks to inspire participants to more intentionally consider the rich […]
Composition Master Class
This session is an open forum with new compositions by runners-up of ACDA’s Brock Student Competition under the mentorship of Steven Sametz and Libby Larsen, exploring compositional choices and how to develop the young compositional voice.
Composers in the Cloud
How do composers get their music in the hands of performers in a cloud-based world? A discussion of how traditional and new models address publication and marketing in a time of Spotify, YouTube, and the Next Big Thing you’ve never heard of before.
The Composer and the Chorus— A Beautiful Relationship
Composer Libby Larsen surveys forty years of the ever-changing dynamic between composers and choruses as we raise our voices in song.