Your Advocacy & Collaboration Standing Committee has been quiet over here on their monthly blog post…why? We’ve been curating the most incredible A&C focus issue heading your way this fall! To get everyone excited and ready for the new content coming, we wanted to highlight some of the incredible articles from our first focus issue […]
Choral
Song of (re)Imagining: Modesta Bor
I was first introduced to Modesta Bor (1926–1998) by my friend, Dr. Nicholas Miguel. I was looking for public domain works that were written by women for treble or equal voices and that would fit the educational goals and skill level of the ensemble I was programming for. Modesta Bor was born in Venezuela, […]
Songs of (Re)imagining: The Border CrosSing series
Dr. Ahmed Anzaldúa founded Border CrosSing in 2017, a Minnesota-based organization that “envisions fundamental change in classical music culture, so that every concert, every audience, and the artists on stage truly reflect the cultural reality in which we live.” For more about Dr. Anzaldúa and the beginnings of Border CrosSing, read this 2019 interview with […]
Writing Music People LIKE to Sing with Alan Bullard
For this Oxford Press conversation, I was able to speak to composer Alan Bullard about his life, career and approach to choral music. We talked about what it was like to study with Herbert Howells, the need for music for flexible voicings, the contrasting economy of sheet music sales in the US and UK, as […]
Stories of Healing and Reimagining: Commonalities Part 1
The next two blogs are going to review some of the common themes from this blog over the past 6+ months. If you’ve been reading regularly, you’ll know that this series has focused on managing music-making during COVID while also addressing ADEIB. In Part 1 of Commonalities, we will review the logistics of music-making in […]
Stories of Healing and Reimagining with Olivia Vestal
In March 2020, spring break was extended. Olivia Vestal, now a first-year choral teacher in Durham, NC, was supposed to go to Regional NATS. Instead of performing live, she recorded a video, and remembers that was the last thing she did without a mask. After they finished, she wiped down the piano and recording equipment, […]