From Our Readers

By Molly McLinden For many choral singers, performing can be very intimidating! Although they may have no problem lifting their voices up in song during rehearsals, the thought of spotlights and a live audience terrifies some singers. Stage fright is extremely common among both solo and ensemble performers. The good news is there are several […]

Question: You had not heard of the late African-American composer Florence Price until you read a New Yorker article about her in February 2018. As Alex Ross, the author, wrote: “She is widely cited as one of the first African-American classical composers to win national attention, and she was unquestionably the first black woman to […]

By Elizabeth Alexander, guest blogger When I was growing up, my house was filled with sheet music, with everything from Mozart piano sonatas to Broadway songbooks. My family bought most of it from Childers Music Center, a small storefront run by Dan Childers, also known as “Dandy Dan the Music Man.” In addition to running […]

This blog post was contributed by the staff at Edco, one of ACDA’s partners in online fundraising. In it they share information about their product. Profile of a choir director: This year I need to scrape together over $20,000 for travel expenses, new music, and uniforms/risers/music folders and I know about half of that is […]

The job of a choral music educator, while rewarding, is a complex one. Sometimes it seems that managing the choral music program has very little to do with music making and more to do with paperwork, parents, and politics. For many, time actually spent practicing the artistry of conducting represents a small percentage comparatively to […]

On the day I turned 40 years old I was a professional church music director. I held an advanced degree from a state school with an average music department, and I had 23 years of experience. My salary and goodies package approached $100,000 a year. On the day I turned 50 years old, I held […]

  I began looking back on my 60-plus years of music study and performance, which began in 1952 when I first took piano lessons from Mrs. Meyer at age 5, and then, two years later, when I became church organist at the St. Spyridon Greek Orthodox Church in Sheboygan, Wisconsin (my father, a dentist, was […]

“If you’re nervous, that means you care and you want to give your best.” – Adriana Lima Whether you’ve been singing since Beethoven figured out which end of the pen the ink went on or this is your first performance ever, concert night can (will) bring on the nerves. It’s natural; for months, you’ve been […]

Since starting at my current church, the choir has rallied behind four “functions” of a church choir and has been central in helping the church become what song-enliveners affectionately call a “singing congregation.” As the director of a church choir I use four functions to explain why the church choir exists. Those priorities help determine […]

“Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.” – Robert H. Schuller There are two answers to the question, “What’s happening tomorrow?” if it’s posed to a member of a chorus the night before a concert: “We have a concert tomorrow night, I can’t wait.” “We have a concert tomorrow night…what do I do? AUGH!!!” […]