Latest Blog Posts

For motivated choir directors, a new year brings fresh ideas and a new start. But I urge you to read this blog before you dive in with a new approach, new policies, or a special concert idea.   Don’t Make Any New Year’s Changes UNTIL You Read This! Read This BEFORE Making New Year’s Changes

“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” Leonard Bernstein  Have you ever noticed the best holiday stories portray some sort of dream? From the ballet, “The Nutcracker” to all of the many incarnations of Dickens, “A Christmas Carol” someone is always sleeping and […]

Going Beyond Words host, Stan Schmidt continues in the spirit of the season for ACDA Radio and ChoralNet by presenting 18 melodies and three poems saluting Christmas that run back to back for an hour. Just turn up the volume and enjoy this program first heard by listeners on the day after Christmas in 2010…….Groups […]

Most of us make New Year’s Resolutions but we make them as choral directors? Last year, I published a blog with my 11 Choral Resolutions for 2017. I have republished my 11 resolutions along with the concluding results. You may find these results surprising. What goals do you have for next year? What do you intend […]

Don’t miss the latest edition of Sharp Notes! The staff at the ACDA National Office send their season’s greetings to you and your family this holiday season.

  “My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends – it gives a lovely light!” Edna St. Vincent Millay I have been in a “growlie” mood for weeks. My youngest coined the term for this crabby-it’s-December-and-I’ve-got-so-much-to-do-for-Christmas-and-my-choirs-are-driving-me-crazy mood when he was about three or […]

This week, Going Beyond Words and ACDA Radio/ChoralNet is visited by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and some voices from Broadway, and the Metropolitan Opera to tell the dramatic story about the struggle faced by George Fredric Handel as he began writing “Messiah”. Laura Osnes, Soprano offers The Secret of Christmas from the film Say One […]

Use the 5 “E”s It can be quite frustrating when we have prepared for months, have a perfect balance, exact riser alignment and then students don’t show up to the concert. Sometimes we are provided with advanced notice and other times we find out the day of, or they just don’t even show up. It’s […]

ChorTeach is ACDA’s quarterly online magazine for choral directors and music educators. The articles in each issue are gleaned from ACDA state and division newsletters and from submissions. ChorTeach is specifically designed for those who work with amateur singers and are looking for practical material to apply to classrooms and rehearsals. Below is a preview of the articles […]

By Nick Burdick If a good music education teaches students how to think like musicians, then our rehearsals should teach our students how to practice like musicians.  Good practice habits can be used in any context, even outside of music, so it pays off to teach them explicitly.  It can also make our rehearsals more […]