CJ Replay: The Birth of ACDA

(The ACDA leadership met last month in Dallas for training and to tend to the business of running our Association.  It seems timely to look back to what out first President, Archie Jones, had to say when the Association was brand new.  This is from the first page of the first volume of the Choral Journal.)

 

       On Tuesday, February 24, 1959, an historic meeting took place in Kansas City, Missouri, in connection with the biennial national convention of the Music Teachers National Association. The meeting: the organizational meeting of the American Choral Directors Association.

       During the course of 1958, a Steering Committee was organized by mail. Each member suggested a list of names of choral directors who were considered competent, and sufficiently interested in the profession to support an organization. The Steering Committee early recognized the fact that although every other facet of the music business and profession was represented by an organization. no such representation existed on a national level for choral directors!

       As soon as names were suggested by the Steering Committee, descriptive letters were sent,  again asking for other names. It was decided that the first, or organizational, meeting would take place in conjunction with the M.T.N.A. convention, this being the best available major vocational convention centrally located.

       Of the one hundred thirty directors accepting charter membership, more than seventy attended the organizational meeting. A constitution and by-laws were adopted, officers elected, and after the first business meeting the members participated in four choral reading sessions. The music was pre-selected by a committee of three, and sent at their own expense by the publishers. The music was packaged and distributed without charge by the Jenkins Music Company of Kansas City.

       The American Choral Directors Association is now an established organization.  A list of the purposes appears elsewhere in this News Letter, as does an application for membership. The next annual convention will be held in Atlantic City in March of 1960, at which time numerous program features will be combined with reading sessions. These will be channeled to the interest of the four categories of membership: college, high school, church, and industry.