Becoming a collegiate choral director takes more than desire or being a “stick jockey.” A collegiate choral director must document a proven life of service to the field of education and music. Likewise with job applicants. The preparation and action begins in the undergraduate years and extends well beyond when a position is offered. Using […]
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Worshipful Singing: The Role of Choral Music in Worship
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his little book Life Together (1939) wrote, “It is the voice of the church that is heard in singing together.” Bonhoeffer cited a number of passages from both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures to support his view that the song of a faith community is an indispensable expression of the community’s essence. […]
Where the Boys Are: Recruiting, Engaging, and Maintaining Tenors and Basses
Need more young men in your choirs? This session offers practical ideas from a director who started with eleven men and grew them to 100! Once you bring them into your choir room, how can you keep them, train them, and get them hooked so they become your future ambassadors for choral music? Repertoire will […]
Vocal Terminology: Finding Common Ground and Synergy between Choral Directors and Teachers of Singing
As teachers of singing, choral directors and applied voice teachers have much in common. Tensions, however, often develop between choral directors and private singing teachers simply due to misunderstandings that occur as a result of using different terminology to describe vocal phenomena. This Presentation—based in part on the research published in Hoch’s book, A Dictionary […]
Using the iPad and ForScore in the Choral Classroom
This session will include a demonstration of the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil with ForScore as a rehearsal and performance music folder. Advantages discussed include compact size, ease of use, integrated elements (pitch wheel, metronome), redundancy, ease of transmission and annotation, and display to the ensemble in rehearsal. Conversion from internet sources (such as ChoralPublic […]
Teaching Methods for Beginning Chorus from an Inner-City Urban High School Music Classroom Perspective
What type of repertoire do we teach? How can we create excitement around singing and learning music? As choir directors, these questions are essential to our preparation before west and in front of our choirs. We must choose repertoire that will develop our students’ music skills in addition to creating excitement about music making and […]
