On the opportunity to chat with other choral composers:
A highlight of my visit was getting the opportunity to meet with other choral composers. The thing that struck me most of all on meeting them was how well they all know each other, and even regularly interact. In Ireland I can go years without speaking to another choral director, and I have had only one conversation with another Irish composer about writing for choir in the last twenty five years. I am pretty social, and love talking about choral music, but being so starved of conversation I had to apologise repeatedly to my colleagues for verbally steam-rolling through conversations.
On the changing nature of music publishing:
I feel that choral composers specifically need to band together as a unit, putting aside self-interest, and collectively gain an enduring voice in the industry. Even at this early stage, enlightened choral people know that the digital publishing model is the future. Paper distribution, besides being environmentally unfriendly, will become the exception and not the rule in the future. Therefore the place of the traditional publisher in choral infrastructure will become less significant. Publishers should be embracing this change, not discouraging it. Forums such as the ACDA and their various national conferences need to look carefully at the current relationships that they have in place with publishers and build into that the realisation that some of the most important music is now being produced by individual composers.
On the big picture of ACDA and choral music in the USA:
What I saw at ACDA, despite the minor issues I point out above, was a real choral infrastructure that values education above all else. You even have Third Level colleges that have faculties where professors of choral arts teach choral music to students!!! Do you know how amazing that is? We don’t have any in my country. You have the most important online choral resource for directors all over the world in the fantastic Choralnet, getting bigger and better all the time. There you can talk to other people with the same love as you. You have these conferences that bring together all the choral disciplines under one roof, a forum for celebration and change. You don’t know how lucky you are! Well, I do, and I will definitely come back in 2013. America is blessed with a thriving, varied and vibrant choral culture and it was a privilege to be part of it this year. Long may it continue.
Michael McGlynn says
Tim Sharp says
R. Daniel Earl says