Dear Secretary Duncan, Thank you for your open letter to America’s teachers. We appreciate that you want to work with us and that you respect our opinions. Therefore, we would like to bring a few items to your attention on behalf of the music education community. As you know, local budget cuts are […]
Choral Anniversary
This week I return to my college Alma Mater, and a former professorial post, Belmont University, to participate in the 40th Anniversary Celebration of the Belmont Chorale. During the weekend events, many of the accomplishments of the Chorale will be appropriately spotlighted, and we will get to hear the exciting work of Chorale conductor and […]
Music and Language
In her Exchange article Early Brain Development Research Review and Update, Pam Schiller notes new thinking on the link between music and language… "Linguists, psychologists, and neuro-scientists have recently changed their long held opinion about the relationship between speaking and singing. The latest data show that music and language are so intertwined that an awareness […]
Sing for Japan
If you are like me, when disaster or tragedy strikes the world community, after the shock subsides, there is a helplessness that sets in related to how we can fully empathize, react, and help. We look at what we do for a living and ask the question, “How does what we do make a difference?” […]
Singing With Cannibals
There is a National Geographic program now airing on television called Eating With Cannibals http://on.natgeo.com/if2F4p The host of the program is Piers Gibbon, and his journal is available on the program website. In one journal entry, he interviewed a cannibal (apparently, now reformed) in Papua New Guinea, that was from the Biami tribe. Through the […]
A Festival for Boys and Men’s Choirs
The American Choral Directors Association is pleased to contribute to the sponsorship of the International Boys and Men’s Choral Festival this coming July 25-August 1, 2011. This unique event offers exceptional singing opportunities for choirs as well as individual singers, and includes the added bonus of the promotion of global understanding as well as encouragement […]