Latest Blog Posts

In many James Bond movies, 007 saves the day by stopping a ticking timer with only seconds to spare.  You may not be Bond, James Bond, but if you look at the ACDA website, you’ll notice that your timer is ticking, too. Is it a bomb?  No . . . the timer is counting down […]

Weldon, Brady.  Sing Me to Heaven: The History, Music, and Character of the African American Spiritual. Bachelor of Music Education Senior Thesis.  Stephen F. Austin State University, forthcoming..   Hailed as one of the most important and influential musical genres in the developing United States, the African-American spiritual, through its heart-breaking melodies and daring messages […]

Ever notice the name tags at an ACDA conference?  They use our first names.  Not degrees, not titles, not ranks or appointments.  Just plain ol’ first names.   Those who stay in the choral conducting profession long enough typically accumulate a string of letters after their name.  Some of us have an additional couple before […]

COMPOSITION SPOTLIGHT ~ by Jack Senzig   (Each week we look at a piece of useful repertoire from the ChoralNet Community Composition Showcase.  A variety of voicings and levels of difficulty will be presented.  Enjoy!)   Hymns and Songs of the Church/There is a Green Hill Far Away by Antony Pitts SATB a cappella (click for PDF and […]

(theproducersperspective.com) I write this week from the Florida Educational Technology Conference.   As a conductor first, and an educational technologist second, I am always fascinated by the angst of the ed. tech world: So much of the educational technology realm is seeking to take content and make it a) experiential, b) creative and c) personal. […]

The 2011 ACDA National Conference included “Jazz Night.”  This feature was so incredibly popular that it is being expanded; during the 2013 ACDA National Conference Jazz Night will be a two-night affair featuring vocal jazz ensembles from the high school, collegiate and professional realms.   Here is a taste of one of the Jazz night […]

Anyone who survived music history and literature courses has had to identify works based solely on hearing a small snippet of the piece (back in the day it was called, somewhat nefariously, “Drop the Needle”).  One is secure enough in one’s choral-geekyness to admit that one still plays that game in the car, going from […]

(An excerpt from the Choral Journal article, “Stylistic Consistency In Three Choral Works Of Stravinsky,” by Maureen Cash Moffet) Another consistency found in Stravinsky’s choral style is his use of melodies of small range. In Les Noces, this feature results from the nature of the cell. The melodic style of Oedipus Rex is generally of […]

(An excerpt from the Choral Journal article, “J.S. Bach’s “Lutheran” Masses: Aspects of Chronology and Structure“, by Chester L. Alwes) Bach’s “Lutheran Masses” are comprised of only the Kyrie and Gloria texts of the Mass, an occurrence so consistent throughout Protestant Germany that the majority of Masses composed there during the Baroque era were of […]

(An excerpt from the Choral Journal article, "Performance Practices of Sacred Polyphony in Rome and Madrid at the Times of Tomas Luis de Victoria," by Aimee Beckmann-Collier) The Roman choirs with which Victoria and Palestrina were associated were the centers of musical life in the late sixteenth century, and the singers attached to them enjoyed […]